
Vol.LXX. 



This Number is Complete, Unchanged and Unabridged. 



( DOUBLE ( 
[NUMBER.) 



GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

Nos. 17 to 37 Vandewater Street, New York. 



f PRICE ? 
(20 CENTS.! 



No. 1411 



The Seaside Library, Issued Daily.— By Subscription. $36 per annum. 
Copyrighted 1883, by George Muuro.— Entered at the Post Office at New York at Second Class Rates.— November 4, 1883. 



A Child's History of England. 



By CHAELES l r>ICKEHS 




KING JOHN OP FRANCE AT THE BATTLE OF POITTEKS. 



NEW YORK : 

GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

VI to 27 VANDEWATER STREET 



£1 I 



w 



PROSPECTUS FOR 1883. 



THE NEW YORK 




The country has entered upon an era of prosperity, 
»nd during the next five years our people will have 
more money to spend than ever before. 

To meet the popular demand, which always accom- 
panies such a state of prosperity, we have made extra 
ordinary exertions and outlays for the coming year, in 
^rder to make 

A Paper Superior to all Others. 

Good as The Fireside Companion has always been, 
we assure our readers that during the coming year we 
Shall present New Fen tares and Novelties of sur- 

g^assing attractiveness. 



05JR NEW CONTRIRUTOIBS. 

The best native story writers who have lately come 
forward are added to our list of contributors, which is 
■aow the largest and strongest engaged upon any weekly 
^aper in America. 

The New York Fireside Companion has 

The Best Continued Stories. 

All who have read the 

Great Detective Stories 

which have appeared in The Fireside Companion 
will grant our claim that they beat the whole world. 
Kt contains the most interesting 

SOCIETY STORIES, 

fche purest and sveetesfc love stories, and its Indian 
fcales have been celebrated for half a generation among 
those who admire the stirring life and intrepid warriors 
Of the western plains. 
During 188a The Fireside Companion will contain 

A Timber Number of Sketches -.. 

Mian it has published heretofore. 

COMIC SKETCHES; orl B lnaI humor from FTTNNT 
CONTRIBUTORS; SHORT STORIES, POETRY and 
BIOGRAPHY ; ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS, 
HUMOROUS ARTICLES, READING FOR LITTLE 
FOLKS, FASHIONABLE CHIT-CHAT FOR THE LA- 
DIES, containing the most reliable Information In re- 
gard to every article of dress; HOUSEHOLD RECIPES. 
and other Interesting departments, will be maintained 
without regard to expense. 

A new continued story will be commenced about 
every second week, so that new readers will be able to 
fret the beginning- of a story of the newsdealers, or of 
us, no matter at what time they may subscribe. Back 
numbers can always be had containing the commence- 
ment of every story. 

All of the old contributors continue to write for The 
Fireside Companion. Every number is full of lively 
and charming original matter. Our aim is always to 
make 

A Valuable and Attractive Paper 

for both young and old, aiming to combine entertain- 
ment and amusement with desirable information on 
matters relating to the home, courtship, marriage, so- 
ciety, and dress; to gratify the innate curiosity and 
interest of all iu the pure and natural romance of life; 
to cultivate a taste for reading and intellectual pleas- 
ures; and to inculcate good sentiments and principles 
in the minds of the young. Nothing of animmoral ten- 
dency is ever admitted into its columns. 

Reading for Little Folks. 

This is, and will continue to be, one of the prominent 
features of the paper. The contributions to this de- 
partment are by the very foremost writers for children 
in the country. This alone makes The New York 
FiREsriE Companion invaluable to every household 
where there are children. We know of instances where 
the little ones insist upon having these articles read 
over and over again to them before the paper of the 
following week is issued. 

Correspondents* Column. 

No efforts or pains are spared to make this depart- 
ment most attractive and useful to our readers. It is 
edited by a gentleman of wide experience and sound 
judgment, and a vast amount of information is given: 
answers to questions relating to love and etiquette, 
legal and medical questions, information for the kitch- 
en and household; .1 fact, answers to all questions 
that turn up in life can be found in this column. 

Every number contains desirable information rela- 
tive to courtship, engagements, society, marriage, 
dress, and manners. 

Questions on all subjects of interest are answered 
free, and readers frequently save much trouble and 
expense by applying directly for advice in social and 
business matters. 

THE FIRESIDE COMPANION 

is the best weekly paper published, combining enter- 
tainment with valuable information, inculcating good 
sentiments and principles, and excluding everything of 
an immoral tendency. 

TERMS FOR 1SS2. 
The Neic York Fireside Companion will be sent for 
one year, on receipt of 83; two copies for $5; or nine 
copies for §30. Uetters-up of Clubs can afterward add 
single copies at $2.50 each. We will be responsible for 
remittances sent in Registered Letters, or by Post-office 
Money Orders. Postage free. Specimen copies sent free 
GEOR«R MONRO, Publisher, 

i?s O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandeuater Street, New York. 



Imperial Pinned Paper Patterns. 



We are prepared to supply Imperial Pirwied Paper 
Patterns of all the Costumes, Mantles, Jackets, etc., 
published in the Magazine. These patterns are far 
superior to any that have hitherto been sold in America. 
They are cut on scientific principles by the First 
American Modistes, and are guaranteed for good tit 
and style. They will prove of very great advantage to 
all dressmakers, enabling them to make up, with the 
greatest ease, any costume represented in this favorite 
Magazine. These patterns, fashioned into shape, will 
likewise be of very great service to those ladies tvho 
have their dresses made up at home. 

PLEASE EEMRMKE-iae 

that tVie patterns furnished by us are fashioned into 
shape; every seam is formed, each fold and plait is 
laid — the pocket, collar, cuffs, etc., are all pinned in 
-;heir proper places; in short, when one of the Imperial 
Patterns is unfolded it shows just how the garment will 
•■ ooL when completed. 

Directions for Measur- 
ing.— For all fitted gar- 
ments, Polonaise, Basques, 
etc., the bust measure only 
is necessary. This should 
be taken aery foostftyaround 
the form under the arms, 
and over the f u llest part of 
the bust and the shoulder- 
blades. Take the measure 
in the same manner for 
half-loose and loose gar- 
ments as for tight-fitting 
garments. For a skirt, the 
front length only is re 
quired. For Misses' and 
Children's patterns the 
measures are taken the 
same as for ladies —and tl it, 
age of the child should 
always be given. 




Imperial Pinned Paper Patterns. 



i£W YORK MONTHLY FASHION BAZAR 

BEORGE MUNKO, r^LisHER, 
- (St Box 33S5L *7 to a? Vandewater street. W fl "So 



"We are prepared to supply Imperial Pinned Paper 
Patterns, cut and pinned into the shape of garments of 
all fashions illustrated in the New York Monthly 
Fashion Bazar. Parties ordering patterns should be 
particular to state the number of costume and date of 
Bjzar containing th^ illustration or plate. The prices 
of patterns are as follows: 

"Wrap . 35 

Cape .»■"•■• 30 

Jacket ... 30 

Basque . „ 30 

Overskirt 35 

Double-sided overskirt ...'...'« 40 

Polonaise 35 

Double-sided polonaise 40 

Walking skirt, trimmed ...... 40 

Double-sided walking-skirt, trimmed . , , t 45 

Train walking skirt, trimmed 45 

Double-sided train walking skirt., trimmed . , 50 

"Walking skirt with adjustable train, trimmed. . 45 
Double-sided walking skirt with adjustable train, 

trimmed 60 

Walking skirt with adjustable train, untrimmed . 40 

Train skirt, untrimmed 35 

Walking skirt, untrimmed 30 

Wrapper _ 40 

Tea-gown 50 

Ulster . 35 

Riding-habit 30 

Kiiling-habit with petticoat ..... 40 

Riding-habit with petticoat and pants 50 

^Princess dress 75 

Walking costume 75 

Indoor costume . 90 

Reception costume „ . 1 00 

Dinner costume 1 00 

Ball costume „ „ . 1 00 

Whole costume for double-sided dress . . 150 

Chemise . . .30 

Princess chemise ......-* 35 

Drawers , „ . . 30 

Princess drawers . 35 

Night dress SO 

Corset 25 

CHILDREN'S PATTERNS. 

Princess dress, from 2 to 9 years . 30 

Princess dress, from 10 to 15 years ... 35 

Double-sided polonaise, from 10 to 15 years . „ 35 

Polonaise, from 10 to 15 years .... 30 

Wrap, jacket, basque, etc. ..... S5 

Overskirt .......... 25 

Trimmed skirt 30 

Ulster and pelisse „ . „ „ 30 

Pinafore and apron - .... P . 20 

Night-dress, chemise, drawers, etc. ... 25 

Bo3's' dress, from 2 to 5 years 30 

Boys' suit: coat, vest, and pants .... 50 

Boys' suit: coat and pants . .... 45 

Boys' blouse ....... „ 25 

Boys' shirt-waist . 30 

Boys' overcoat j 30 

Residents abroad or in Canada will be supplied. The 
extra postage can be calculated by adding 10 cents 
to the price named in this list. 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
P. 0. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Yandewater street, N. Y. 



Seaside Library No. 730, 

THE 

LIFE AND EPISTLES 




Kev. IV. J. CUIVVBGAItE, M.4L., 

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 9AHBRIDOK, 
AND THE 

KeT. J. S. HOWSUN. M.A., 

DEAN OF CHESTER. 

WITH 

Maps, Chrouologic.a) Table, 
and Appendix., 

List of Maps: 

1. Roman Roads near 3. Chart of .v&lta. 

Lystra. 4. Pis u of Rome. 

2. Plan of Ancient 5. Map of Paul's 

Athens. Journeys. 



First Half 
Second Half 



20 Cents. 
20 Cents 



P. O. Box 37S1. 



GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

17 to 37 Vandewater street. N. T. 



NOW READT-COmPLKTE, 

IN 

Seaside Library No, 750 

A HISTORY 

0U& OWS TIMES. 

By Justin McCarthy. 

No. 750, Part I., containing Vol- 
umes I. and II. . . . 20o 

No. 750, Part II., containing Vol- 
umes III. and IV. . . 20o 



*.O.Bo*3751. 



GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 
17 to 27 Vandewater street, N. T. 



THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 

Now ready, in clear, bold, handsome typo, 
and printed on fine tinted paper, 

SEASIDE LIBRARY NO. I OOf>, 

BEING 

THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT, 
and the Authorized Version of the Now . 
Testament, in parallel columns, side by 
side, on same page, with Tischendol f's 
Notes. Parti., containing the Gospels. 26 

THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT, 
and the Authorized Version of the New 
Testament, in parallel columns, side by 
side, on same page, with Tiscliendorf's 
Notes. Part II., containing Acts of the 
Apostles to Revelation 28 

GEORGE MONRO, PUBLISHES, 
P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater street. N. Y\ 



A NEW EOOK FOE 7ADIES. 



CUTTING-OViT 



AND 



KIMG, 



FROM THE FRENCH OF 
SUaUE. E. WEASBrSiOJJfflE. 

FULL DIRECTIONS FOR 

Cutting Evert Garment Worn by Ladies, 
WITn numebous diagrams. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS: 

How to Take Measures, Verification of the measure- 
ments, Variable Measures useci as Supplementary to 
the Fixed Measures, Variable Measures not forming 
Rectangular Diagrams, Drafts of Patterns of Dresses, 
Verification of the Patterns for a Body, Dresses for 
Young Girls and Children. General Directions for Pre- 
paring a Dress or other Garment before making it up, 
Dress with Basque, Dressing gown, Low Body with 
round waist, Caraco, Pelerine, How to Transpose Mca» 
ures, Chemise, Drawers, AproDS, etc., etc. 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 
P. O. Box 376t 



GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
17 to 27 Vandewater street. No So 





<33 



a$g 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

By CHARLES DICKENS. 




This Number is Complete, Unchanged and Unabridged. 



Vol.LXX. 



\ DOUBLE ,' 
{NUMBER. S 



GEORGE MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

Nos. 17 to 2T Vakdewater Street, New York. 



S PRICE ? 
120 CENTS. J 



No. 1411 



The Seaside Library, Issued Daily.— By Subscription. $3G pel* annum. 
Copyrighted 1883, by George Munro.— Entered at the Post Oflice at New York at Second Class Rates.— November 4, 









A Child's History of England. 



By CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND AND THE ROMANS. 

If you look at a Map of the World, you will 
see, in the left-hand upper corner of the East- 
ern Hemisphere, two Islands lying in the sea. 
They are England and Scotland, and Ireland. 
England and Scotland form the greater part of 
these Islands. Ireland is the next in size. The lit- 
tle neighboring islands, which are so small upon 
the Map as to be mere dots, are chiefly little bits 
of Scotland — broken off, I dare say, in the 
course of a great length -of time, by the power 
of the restless water. 

In the old days, a long, long while ago, be- 
fore Our Saviour was bom on earth and lay 
asleep in a manger, these Islands were in the 
same place, and the stormy sea roared round 
them, just as it roars now. But the sea was not 
alive, then, with great ships and brave sailors, 
sailing to and from all parts of the world. 
It was very lonely. The Islands lay solitary in 
the great expanse of water. The foaming waves 
dashed against their cliffs, and the bleak winds 
blew over their forests; but the winds and waves 
brought no adventurers to land upon the Islands, 
and the savage Islanders knew nothing of the 
rest of the world, and the rest of the world knew 
nothing of them. 

. It is supposed that the Phoenicians, who were 
an ancient people, famous for carrying on trade, 
came in ships to these Islands, and found that 
they produced tin and lead; both very useful 
things, as you know, and both produced to this 
very hour upon the sea coast. The most cele- 
brated tin mines in Cornwall are still close to 
the se:\. One of them, which I have seen, is so 
close to it that it is hollowed out underneath the 
ocean; and the miners say that in stormy 
weather, when they are at work down in that 
deep place, they can hear the noise of the waves 
thundering above their heads. So the Phoeni- 
cians, coasting about the Islands, would come, 
without much difficulty, to where the tin and 
lead were. 

The Phoenicians traded with the Islanders for 
these metals, and gave the Islanders some other 
useful things m exchange. The Islanders were, 
at first, poor savages, going almost naked, or 
only dressed in the rough skins of beasts, and 



staining their bodies, as other savages do, with 
colored" earths and the juices'of plants. But the 
Phoenicians, sailing over to the opposite coasts 
of France and Belgium, and saying to the 
people there, "We have been to those white 
cliffs across the water, which you can see in fine 
weather, and from that country, which is called 
Britain, we bring this tin and lead," tempted 
some of the French and Belgians to come over 
also. These people settled themselves on the 
south coast of England, which is now called 
Kent; and, although they were a rough people 
too, thev taught the savage Britons some useful 
aits, and improved that part of the Islands. It 
is probable that other people came over from 
Spain to Ireland, and settled there. 

Thus, by little and little, strangers became 
mixed with the Islanders, and the savage Britons 
grew into a wild bold people; almost savage 
still, especially in the interior of the country 
away from the sea, where the foreign settlers 
seldom went; but hardy, brave, and strong. 

The whole country was covered with forests 
and swamps. The greater part of it was very 
misty and cold. There were no roads, no 
bridges, no streets, no houses that you would 
think deserving of the name. A town was noth- 
ing but a collection of straw-covered huts, hid- 
den in a thick wood, with a ditch all round, and 
a low wall, made of mud, or the trunks of trees 
placed one upon another. The people planted 
little or no corn, but lived upon the flesh of their 
flocks and cattle. They made no coins, but 
used metal rings for money. They were clever 
in basket-work, as savage people often are; and 
they could make a coarse kind of cloth, and 
some very bad earthenware. But in building 
fortresses they were much more clever. 

They made boats of basket-work, covered 
with the skins of animals, but seldom, if ever, 
ventured far from the shore. They made 
swords, of copper mixed with tin; but, these 
swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft 
that a heavy blow would bend one. They made 
light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears 
— which they jerKed back, after they had thrown 
them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather 
fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, 
to frighten an enemy's horse. The ancient. 
Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or 



forty tribes, each commanded by its own little 
king, were constantly fighting with one another, 
as savage people usually do; and they always 
fought with these weapons. 

They were very fond of horses. The stand- 
ard of Kent was the picture of a volute horse. 
They could break them in and manage them 
wonderfully well Indeed, the horses (of which 
they had an abundance, though they were rather 
small) were so well taught in those (lays, that 
they can scarcely be said to have improved 
since, though the men are so much wiser. They 
understood, and obeyed, every word of com- 
mand; and would stand still by themselves, in 
all the din and noise of battle, while their mas- 
ters went to fight on foot. The Britons could 
not have succeeded in their most remarkable art 
without the aid of these sensible and trusty ani- 
mals The art I mean is the construction and 
management of war-chariots or cars, for which 
they have ever been celebrated in history. Each 
of the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast 
high in front, and open at the back, contained 
one man to drive, and tivo or three others to 
fight — all standing up. The horses who drew 
them were so well trained, that they would 
tear, at full gallop, over the most stony ways, 
and even through the woods; dashing down 
their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and 
cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords 
or sc3'thes, which were fastened to the wheels, 
and stretched out beyond the car on each side, 
for that, cruel purpose. In a moment, while at 
full speed, the horses would stop at the driver's 
command. The men within would leap out, 
deal blows about them with their swords like 
hail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back 
into the chariots anyhow; and, as soon as they 
were safe, the horses tore away again. 

The Britons had a strange and terrible relig- 
ion, called the Religion of the Druids. It seems 
to have been brought over, in very early times 
indeed, from the opposite country of France, 
anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the 
worship of the Serpent, and of the Sun and 
Moon, with the worship of some of the Heathen 
Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies 
were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who 
pretended to be enchanters, and who carried 
magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, 



4 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



about his neck, what he told the ignorant peo- 
ple waa a Serpent's egg in a golden case. But it 
is certain that the Druidical ceremonies includ- 
ed the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of 
some suspected criminals, and, on particular 
occasions, even the burning alive, in immense 
wicker cages, of a number of men and animals, 
together. The Druid Priests had some kind of 
veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe — 
the same plant that we hang up in houses at 
Christmas-lime now — when its white berries 
grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark 
woods which they called Sacred Groves; and 
there they instructed, in their mysterious arts, 
young men who came to them as pupils, and 
who sometimes stayed with them as long as 
twenty years. 

These Druids built great Temples and altars, 
open to the sky, fragments of some of which are 
yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, 
in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. 
Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, 
on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form 
another. We know, from examination of the 
great blocks of which such buildings are made, 
that they could not have been raised without 
the aid of some ingenious machines, which are 
common now, but which the ancient Britons cer- 
tainly did not use in making their own uncom- 
fortable houses. I should not wonder if the 
Druids, and their pupils who stayed with them 
twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the 
Britons, kept the people out of sight while thev 
made these buildings, and then pretended that 
they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a 
hand in the fortresses too; at all events, as they 
were very powerful, and very mach believed in. 
and as they made and executed the laws, and 
paid no taxes, I don't wonder that they liked their 
trade. And, as they persuaded the people the 
more Druids there were, the better off the peo- 
ple would be, I don't wonder that there were a 
good many of them. But it is pleasant to think 
that there are no Druids now, who go on in that 
way, and pretend to carry Enchanters' Wands 
and Serpents' Eggs— and of course there is noth- 
ing of the kind anywhere. 

Such was the improved condition of the an- 
cient Britons, fiity-five years before the birth of 
Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their 
great General, Julius Csesar, were masters of all 
the rest of the known world. Julius Ceesar had 
then just conquered Gaul; and hearing, in 
Gaul, a good deal about the opposite Island 
with the white cliffs, and about the bravery of 
the Britons who inhabited it — a ome of whom 
had been fetched over to help the Gauls in the 
war against him — he resolved, as he was zo near, 
to come and conquer Britain next. 

So, Julius Csesar came sailing over to this 
Island of ours, with eighty vessels and twelve 
thousand man. And he came from the French 
coast between Calais and Boulogne, "because 
thence was the shortest passage into Britain;" 
just for the same reason as our steamboats now 
"take the same track every day. He expected to 
conquer Britain easiby: but it was not such easy 
work as he supposed — for the bold Britons 
fought most bravely ; and, what with not hav- 
ing his horse-soldiers with him (for they had 
been driven back by a storm), and what with 
having some of his vessels dashed to pieces by 
a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he ran 
great risk of being totally defeated. However, 
for once that the bold Britons beat him, he beat 
them twice; though not so soundly but that he 
was very glad to accept their proposals of peace, 
and go away. 

But, in the spring of the next year, he came 
back; this time, with eight hundred vessels and 
thirty thousand men. The British tribes chose, 
as their general-in-chief, a Briton, whom the 
Romans in their Latin language called Cassivel- 
launus, but whose British name is supposed to 
have been Caswallon. A brave general he was, 
and well he and his soldiers fought the Roman 
army ! So well, that whenever in that war the 
Roman soldiers saw a great cloud of dust, and 
heard the rattle of the rapid British chariots, 
they trembled in their hearts. Besides a num- 
ber of smaller battles, there was a battle fought 
near Canterbury, in Kent; there was a battle 
fought near Chertsey, in Surrey; there was a 
battle fought near a marshy little town in "a 
wood, the capital of that part of Britain which 
belonged to Cassivellaunus, and which was 
probably near what is now St. Albans, in Hert- 
fordshire. However, brave Cassivellaunus had 
the worst of it, on the whole; though he and his 
men always fought like lions. As the other 
British chiefs were jealous of him, and were al- 
waj's quarreling with him, and with one anoth- 



er, he gave up, and proposed peace. Julius 
Csesar was very glad to grant peace easily, and 
to go away again with all his remaining ships 
and men. He had expected to find pearls in 
Britain, and he may have found a few for any- 
thing 1 know; but, at all events, he found de- 
licious oysters, and I am sure he found-tough 
Britons — of whom, I dare say, he made the same 
complaint as Napoleon Bonaparte, the great 
French General, did, eighteen hundred years 
afterward, when he said they were such unrea- 
sonable fellows that they never knew when they 
were beaten. They never did know, 1 believe, 
and never will. , 

Nearly a hundred years passed on, and all that 
time there was peace in Britain. The Britons 
improved their towns and mode of life: became 
more civilized, traveled, and learnt a great deal 
from the Gaul3 and Romans. At last, the 
Roman Emperor, Claudius, sent A.ulus Plautius, 
a skillful general, with a mighty force, to sub- 
| due the Island, and shortly aflerward arrived 
i himself. They did little; and Ostorius Scapula, 
another general, came. Some of the British 
Chiefs of Tribes submitted. Others resolved to 
fight to the death. Of these brave men, the 
bravest was Caractacus, or Caradoc, who gave 
battle to the Romans, wikh his army, among the 
mountains of North Wales. "This day," said 
fie to his soldiers, " decides the fate of Britain! 
I Your liberty, or your eternal slavery, dates from 
j this hour. Remember your brave ancestors, 
' who drove the great Csesar himself across the 
sea!" On hearing these words, his men, with a 
great shout rushed upon the Romans. But the 
j strong Roman swords and armor were too much 
I for the weaker British weapons in close conflict. 
! The Britons lost the clay. The wife and daugh- 
ter of the brave Caractacus were taken prison- 
ers; his brothers delivered themselves up; he 
himself was betrayed into the hands of the 
j Romans by his false and base stepmother; and 
they carried him, and all his family, in tri- 
j umph to Rome. 

But a great man will be great in misfortune, 

great in prison, great in chains. His noble air, 

| and dignified endurance of distress, so touched 

! the Roman people who thronged the streets to 

! see him, that he and his family were restored to 

j freedom. No one knows whether his great heart 

j broke, and he died in Rome, or whether he ever 

returned to his own dear country. English oaks 

have grown up from acorns, and withered away, 

when they were hundreds of years old — and 

other oaks have sprung up in their places, and 

' died too, very aged — since the rest of the history 

of the brave Caractacus was forgotten. 

Still the Britons would not yield. They rose 
again and again, and died by thousands, sword 
in hand. They rose on every possible occasion. 
Suetonius, another Roman general, came, and 
stormed the Island of Anglesey (then called 
Mona), which was supposed to be sacred, and he 
burnt the Druids in their own wicker cages, by 
their own fires. "But, even while he was in Brit- 
ain with his victorious troops, the Britons rose. 
Because Boadicea, a British queen, the widow 
of the King of the Norfolk and Suffolk people, 
resisted the plundering of her property by the 
Romans who were settled in England, she was 
scourged, by order of Catus, a Roman officer; 
and her two daughters were shamefully insulted 
in her presence, and her husband's relations 
were made slaves. To avenge this injury, the 
Britons rose, with all their might and rage. 
They drove Catus into Gaul; they laid the 
Roman possessions waste; they forced the 
Romans out of London, then a poor little town, 
but a trading place; they hanged, burnt, cruci- 
fied, and slew by the sword, seventy thousand 
Romans in a few days. Suetonius strength- 
ened his army, and advanced to give them bat- 
tle. They strengthened their army, and desper- 
ately attacked his, on the field where it was 
strongly posted. Before the first charge of the 
Britons was made, Boadicea, in a war-chariot, 
with her fair hair streaming in the wind, and 
her injured daughters lying at her feet, drove 
among the troops, and cried to them for venge- 
ance on their oppressors, the licentious Romans. 
The Britons fought to the last; but they were 
vanquished with great slaughter, and the un- 
happy Queen took poison. 

Still the spirit of the Britons was not broken. 
When Suetonius left the country, they fell upon 
his troops, and retook the Island of Anglesey. 
Agricola came, fifteen or twenty years after- 
ward, and retook it once more, and devoted 
seven years to subduing the country, especially 
that part of it which is now called Scotland; 
but its people, the Caledonians, resisted him at 
every inch of ground. They fought the bloodi 



est battles with him; they killed their very 
wiv^s and children, to prevent his making pris- 
oners of them; they fell, fighting, in such great 
numbers that certain hills in Scotland are yet 
supposed to be vast heaps of stones piled tip above 
I their graves. Hadrian came, thirty years after- 
ward, and still they resisted him. Severus 
1 came, nearly a hundred years afterward, and 
| they worried his great army like dogs, and re- 
joiced to see them die by thousands, in the bogs 
j and swamps. Caracalla, the son and successor 
: of Severus, did the most to conquer them for a 
i time, but not by force of arms. He knew how 
I little that would do. He yielded up a quantity 
i of land to the Caledonians, and gave the Britons 
the same privileges as the Romans possessed. 
There was peace, after this, for seventy years. 

Then new enemies arose. They were the Sax- 
ons, a fierce, seafaring people from the countries 
to the North of the Rhine, the great river of 
I Germany on the banks of which the best grapes 
grow to make the German wine. They began to 
j come, in pirate ships to the seacoast of Gaul 
and Britain, and to plunder them. They were 
j repulsed by Carausius, a native either of Bel- 
; gium or of Britain, who was appointed by the 
j Romans to the command, and under whom the 
; Britons first began to fight upon the sea. But, 
! after this time, they renewed their ravages. A 
few years more, and the Scots (which was then 
the name for the people of Ireland), and the Picts, 
a northern people, began to make frequent plun- 
; dering incursions into the South oE Britain. All 
! these attacks were repeated, at intervals, during 
two hundred years, and through a long succes- 
sion of Roman Emperors and chiefs; during all 
I which length of time the Britons rose against 
; the Romans, over and over again. At last in 
the days of the Roman Honorius, when the 
Roman power all over the world was fast declin- 
ing, and when Rome wanted all her soldiers at 
home, the Romans abandoned all hope of con- 
quering Britain, and went away. And still, at 
i last, as at first, the Britons rose against them, in 
' their old brave manner: for, a very little while 
before, they had turned away the Roman magis- 
, trates, and declared themselves an independent 
1 people. 

Five hundred years had passed since Julius 
Csesar's first invasion of the Island, when the 
Romans departed from it forever. In the course 
I of that time, although they had been the cause of 
1 terrible fighting and bloodshed, they had done 
much (o improve the condition of the Britons. 
They had made great military roads; they had 
built forts; they had taught them how to dress 
I and arm themselves much better than they bad 
ever known how to do before; they had refined 
\ the whole British way of living. Agricola had 
I built a great wall of earth, more than seventy 
: miles long, extending from Newcastle to beyond 
Carlisle, for the purpose of keeping out the Picts 
and Scots; Hadrian had strengthened it; Severus, 
I finding it much in want of repair, had built it 
afresh of stone. Above all, it was in the Roman 
time, and by means of Roman ships, that the 
I Christian Religion was first brought into Britain, 
I and its people first taught the great lesson that, 
J to be good in the sight of God, they must love 
their neighbors as themselves, and do unto others 
as they would be done by. The Druids declared 
j that it was very wicked to believe in any such 
i thing, and cursed all the people who did believe 
I in it, very heartily. But, when the people 
found that they were none the better for the 
j blessings of the Druids, and none the worse 
for the curses of the Druids, but that the sun 
shone and the rain fell without consulting the 
Druids at all, they just began to think that the 
Druids were mere' men, and that it signified very 
little whether they cursed or blessed. After 
which, the pupils of the Druids fell off greatly 
in numbers, and the Druids took to other trades. 
Thus I have come to the end of the Roman 
time in England. It is but little that is known 
of those five hundred years; but some remains 
of them are still found. Often, when laborers 
are digging up the ground, to make foundations 
for houses or churches.they light on rusty money 
that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments 
of plates from which they ate, oi goblets from 
which they drank, and of pavement on which 
they trod, are discovered among the earth that 
is broken by the plow, or the dust that is crum- 
bled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the 
Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the 
Romans made t arm part of our highways. In 
seme battle-fields British spear-hea:ls and Roman 
armor have been found, mingled together ir 
decay, as they fell in the thick pressure of tb( 
fight. Traces of Roman camps overgrown witl 
grass, and of mounds that are the burial-place. 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



of heaps of Britons, are to be seen in almost all 
parts of the country. Across the bleak moors 
of Northumberland, the wall of Sevems, over- 
run with moss and -needs, still stretches, a strong 
ruin; and the shepherds and their dogs lie sleep- 
ing on it in the summer weather. On Salisbury 
Plain, Stonehenge yet stands: a monument of 
the earlier time when the Roman name was un- 
known in Britain, and when the Druid, with 
their best magic wands, could not have written 
it in the sands of the wild seashore. 



1 
CHAPTER II. 

ANCIENT ENGLAND UNDER THE EARLY SAXONS. 

The Romans had scarcely gone away from 
Britain, when the Britons began to wish they 
had never left it. For, the Roman soldiers being 
gone, and the Britons being much reduced in 
numbers by their long wars, the Picts and Scots 
came pouring in, over the broken and uuguarded 
wall of Severus, in swarms. They plundered 
the richest towns, and killed the people; and 
came back so often for more booty and more 
slaughter, that the unfortunate Britons lived a 
life of terror. As if the Picts and Scots were 
not bad enough on land, the Saxons attacked the 
islanders by sea; and, as if something more-were 
still wanting to make them miserable, they 
quarreled bitterly among themselves as to what 
prayers they ought to say, and how they ought 
to say them. The priests, being very angry 
with one another on these questions, cursed one 
another in the heartiest manner; and (uncom- 
monly like the old Druids) cursed all the people 
whom they could not persuade. So, altogether, 
the Britons were very badly off, you may believe. 

They were in such distress, in short, that they 
sent a letter to Rome entreating help — which 
they called the Groans of the Britons; and in 
which they said, " The barbarians chase us into 
the sea, the sea throws us back upon the barba- 
rians, and we have only the hard choice left us 
of perishing by the sword, or perishing by the 
waves." But, the Romans could not help them, 
even if they were so inclined; for they had 
enough to do to defend themselves against their 
o\ /n enemies, who were then very fierce and 
strong. It last, the Britons, unable to bear their 
hard condition any longer, resolved to make 
peace with the Saxons, and to invite the Saxons 
to come into their country, and help themto keep 
out the Picts and Scots. 

It was a British Prince named Vortigern who 
took this resolution, and who made a treaty of 
friendship with Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon 
chiefs. Both of these names, in the old Saxon 
language, signify Horse; for the Saxons, like 
many other nations in a rough state, were fond 
of giving men tlie names of animals., as Horse, 
Wolf, Bear, Hound. The Indians of North 
America — a very inferior people to the Saxons, 
though — do the same to this day. 

Hengist and Horsa drove out the Picts and 
Scots; and "Vortigern, being grateful to them 
for that service, made no opposition to their set- 
tling themselves in that part of England which 
is culled the Isle of Thanet, or to their inviting 
over more of their countrymen to join them. 
But Hengist had a beautiful daughter named 
Rowena; and when, at a feast, she filled a gold- 
en goblet to the brim with wine, and gave it to 
Vortigern, sayiugin a sweet voice, " Dear King, 
thy health!" the King fell in love with her. My 
opinion is, that the cunning Hengist meant him 
to do so, in order that the Saxons might have 
greater influence with him; and that the fair 
Rowena came to that feast, golden goblet and 
all, on purpose. 

At any rate, they were married; and, long 
afterward, whenever the King was angry with the 
Saxons, or jealous of their encroachments, 
Rowena would put her beautiful arms round his 
neck, and softly say, " Dear King, they are my 
people! Be favorable to them, as you loved that 
Saxon girl who gave you the golden goblet of 
wine at the feast!" And, really, I don'tsee how 
the King could help himself. 

Ah! We must all die! In the course of 
years, Vortigern died — he was dethroned, and 
put in prison, first, I am afraid; and Rowena 
died;- and generations of Saxons and Britons 
died; and events that happened during a long, 
loug time would have been quite forgotten but 
for the tales and songs of the old Bards, who 
used to go about from feast to feast, with their 
white beards, recounting the deeds of their fore- 
fathers^ Among the histories of which they 
sang and talked, there was a famous one, con- 
cerning the bravery and virtues of King Arthur, 



supposed to have been a British Prince in those 
old times. But, whether such a person really 
lived, or whether there were several persons 
whose histories came to be confused together 
under that one name, or whether all about him 
was invention, no one knows. 

I will tell you. shortly, what is most interest- 
ing in the early Saxon times, as they are de- 
scribed in these songs and stories of the Bards. 

In, an^ longafter, the days of Vortigern, fresh 
bodies of Saxons, under various chiefs, came 
pouring into Britain. One body, conquering 
the Britons in the East, and settling there, called 
their kingdom Essex ; another body settled in 
the West, and called their kingdom Wessex; the 
Northfolk, or Norfolk people, established them- 
selves in one place; the Southfolk, or Suffolk 
people, established themselves in another; and 
gradually seven kingdoms or stales arose in Eng- 
land, wbich were called the Saxon Heptarchy. 
The poorBritons, falling back before these crowds 
of fighting men whom they had innocently in- 
vited over as friends, retired into Wales and the 
adjacent country; into Devonshire, and into 
Cornwall. Those parts of England long re- 
mained unconquered. And in Cornwall now— 
where the seacoast is very gloomy, steep, and 
rugged— where, in the dark winter-time, ships 
have often been wrecked close to the land, and 
every soul on board has perished — where the 
winds and waves howl drearily, and split the 
solid rocks into arches and caverns — there are 
very ancient ruins, which the people call the 
ruins of King Arthur's Castle. 

Kent is the most famous of the seven Saxon 
kingdoms, because the Christian religion was 
preached to the Saxons there (who domineered 
over the Britons too much to care for what they 
said about their religion, or anything else) by 
Augustine, a monk from Rome. King Ethel- 
bert, of Kent, was soon converted; and, the 
moment he said he was a Christian, his courtiers 
all said they were Christians; after which, ten 
thousand of his subjects, said they were Chris- 
tians too. Augustine built a little church, close 
to the King's palace, on the ground now occu- 
pied by the beautiful cathedral of Canterbury. 
Sebert, the King's nephew, built od a muddy 
marshy place near London, where there had 
been a temple to Apollo, a church dedicated to St. 
Peter, which is now Westminster Abbey. And 
in London itself, en the foundation to the temple 
to Diana, he built another little church, which 
has risen up, since that old time, to be St, Paul's. 

After the death of Ethelbert, Edwin, King of 
Northumbria, who was such a good king that it 
was said a woman or child might openly carry a 
purse of gold, in his reign, without fear, allowed 
his child to be baptized, and held a great oouucil 
to consider whether he and his people should be 
all Christians or not. It was decided that they 
should be. Coifl, the chief priest of the old re- 
ligion, made a great speech on the occasion. In 
this discourse he told the people that he had 
found out the old gods to be.impostors. " I am 
quite. satisfied of it," he said. "Look at me! 
1 have been serving them all my life, and they 
have done nothing for me ; whereas, if they had 
been really powerful, they could not have de- 
cently done -less, in return for all 1 have done 
for thern, than make my fortune. As they have 
never made my fortune, I am quite convinced 
they are impostors 1" When this singular priest 
had finished speaking, he hastily armed himself 
with a sword and lance, mounted a war-horse, 
rode at a furious gallop in sight of all the people 
to the temple, and flung his lance against it as 
an insult. From that time the Christian religion 
spread itself among the Saxons, and became 
their faith. 

The next very famous prince was Egbert. He 
lived about a hundred and fifty years afterward, 
and claimed to have a better right to the throne 
of Wessex than Beortric, another Saxon prince 
who was at the head of that kingdom, and who 
married Edburga, the daughter of Offa, king of 
another of the seven kingdoms. This Queen 
Edburga was a handsome murderess, who 
poisoned people when they offended her. One 
day she mixed a cup of -poison for a certain 
noble belonging to the court; but her husband 
drank of it too, by mistake, and died. Upon 
this, the people revolted in grei.t crowds; and 
running to the palace, and thundering at the 
gates, cried, " Down with the wicked queen who 
poisons men!" They drove her out of the 
country and abolished the title she had dis- 
graced. "Wheri years had passed away, some 
travelers came home from Italy, and said that in 
the town of Pavia they had seen a ragged beg- 
gar-woman, who had once been handsome, but 
was then shriveled, bent, and yellow, wander- 



ing about the streets, crying for bread ; and that 
this beggar-woman was the poisoning English 
queen. It was, indeed, Edburga; and so she died, 
without a shelter for her wretched head, 

Egbert, not considering himself safe in Eng- 
land, in consequence of his having claimed the 
crown of Wessex (for he thought his rival might 
take him prisoner and put him to death), sought ■ 
refuge at the court of Charlemagne, King of 
France. On the death of Beortric, so unhappily 
poisoned by mistake, Egbert came back tew 
Britain; succeeded to the throne of Wessex; con- 
quered some of the other monarchs of the seven 
kingdoms; added their territories to his own; 
and for the first time, called the country over 
which he ruled England. 

And now new enemies arose, who, for a long- 
time, troubled England sorely. These were the 
Northmen, the people of Denmark and Norway, 
whom the English called the Danes. They were 
a warlike people, quite at home upon the sea; 
not Christians; very daring and cruel. They 
came over in ships, and plundered and burned 
wheresoever they landed. Once, they beat 
Egbert in battle. Once, Egbert beat them. But, 
they cared no more for being beaten than the 
English themselves. In the four following short 
reigns of Ethelwulf and his sons, Ethelbald, 
Ethelbert, and Ethelred, they came back, over 
and over again, burning and plundering, and 
laying England waste. In the last-mentioned 
reign they seized Edmund, King of East Eng- 
land, and bound him to a tree. Then, they pro- 
posed to him that he should change his religion; 
but he, being a good Christian, steadily refused. 
Upon that, they beat him, made cowardly jests 
upon him all defenseless as he was, sliot arrows 
at him, and, finally struck off his head. It is 
impossible to say whose head they might have 
struck off next, but for the death of King Ethel- 
red from a wound he had received in fighting 
against them, and the succession to his throne 
of the best and wisest king that ever lived in 
England. 



CHAPTER III. 

ENGLAND UNDER THE GOOD SAXON, ALFRED. 

Alfred the Great was a young man, three- 
and-twenty years of ago, when he became King. 
Twice in his childhood- he had been taken to 
Rome, where the Saxon nobles were in the habit 
of going on journeys which they supposed to be 
religious; and, once, he had stayed for some 
time in Paris. Learning, however, was so little 
cared for then, that at twelve years old he had 
not been taught to read; although, of the sons 
of King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the 
favorite. But he had — as most men who grow 
up to be great and good are generally found to 
have had — an excellent motherland, one day, 
this lady, whose name was Osburga, happened, 
as she was sitting among her sons, to read a 
book of Saxon poetry. The art of printing was 
not known until long and long after that period, 
and the book, which was written, was what is 
called " illuminated " with beautiful bright let- 
ters.richly painted. The brothers admiring it very 
much, their mother said, " I will give it to that 
one of you four princes who first learns to read." 
Alfred sought out a tutor that very day, applied 
himself to learn with great diligence, and soon 
won the book. He was proud of it all his life. 

This great King, in the first year of his reign, 
fought nine battles with the Danes. He made 
some treaties with them too, by which the false 
Danes swore they would quit the country. They 
pretended to consider that they had taken a very 
solemn oath, in swearing thisupon the holy brace- 
lets that they wore, and which was always buried 
with them when they died; but they cared little 
for it, for they thought nothing of breaking 
oaths, and treaties too, as soon as it suited their 
purpose, and coming back again to fight, plun- 
der, and burn, as usual. One fatal winter, in 
the fourth year of King Alfred's reign, they 
spread themselves in great numbers over the 
whole of England; and so dispersed and nut 
the King's soldiers that the King was left i.lor , 
and was obliged to disguise himself as ;; c 
mon peasant, and to take refuge in thee - 
of one of his cowherds who did not know his 
face. 

Here, King Alfred, while the Danes sought 
him far and near, was left alone one day, by the 
cowherd's wife, to watch some cakes which she 
put to bake upon the hearth. But being at work 
upon his bow and arrows, with which lie hoped 
to punish the false Danes ivhen a brighter time 
should come, and thinking deeply of his poor 
unhappy subjects whom the Danes chased 



A CHILD'S- HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



through the laud, his noble mind forgot the 
cakes, and they were burnt. "What!" said the 
cowherd's wife, who scolded him well when 
sue came back, 'and little thought she was 
scolding the King, " you will be ready enough 
to eat them by and by, and yet you cannot watch 
them, idle dog?" 

A-t length, the Devonshire men made head 
against a new host of Danes who landed on their 
coast; killed their chief, and captured their flag; 
on which was represented the likeness of a 
Eaven— a very fit bird for a thievish army like 
that, i think. The loss of their standard troubled 
the Danes greatly, for they believed it to be en- j 
chanted — woven' by the three daughters of one | 
father in a single afternoon — and they had a 
story among themselves that when they were 
victorious in battle, the Kaven stretched his 
wings and seemed to fly; and that when they 
were, defeated, he would droop. He had good 
reason to droop now, if he could have done 
anything half so sensible; for, King Alfred 
joined the Devonshire men ; made a camp with 
them on a piece of firm ground in the midst of 
a bog in Somersetshire; and prepared for a 
great' attempt for vengeance on the Danes, and 
the deliverance of his oppressed people. But, 
first, as it was important to know "how numer- 
ous those pestilent Danes were, and how they 
were fortified, King Alfred, being a good mu- j 
sieian, disguised himself as a glee-man or min- 
strel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish 
camp. He played and sang in the very tent of 
Guthrum, the Danish leader, and entertained 
the Danes as they caroused. While he seemed 
to think of nothing but his music, he was 
watchful of their tents, their arms, their dis- 
cipline, everything that he desired to know. ! 
And right soon did this great King entertain 
them to a different tune; for, summoning all his 
true followers to meet him at an appointed 
place, where they received him with joyful 
shouts and tears, as the monarch whom many 
of them had given up for lost or dead, he put 
himself at their bead, marched on the Danish 
camp, defeated the Danes with great slaughter, 
and besieged them for fourteen days to prevent 
their escape. But, being as merciful as he was 
good and brave, he then, instead of killing 
them, proposed peace: on condition that they 
should altogether depart from that Western part 
of England, and settle in the East; and that ' 
Guthrum should become a Christian, in reme-m- j 
brance of the Divine religion which now taught 
his conqueror, the noble Alfred, to forgive the | 
enemy who had so often injured him. This 
Guthrum did. . At his baptism King Alfred was 
his godfather. And Guthrum was an honorable 
chief, who well deserved that clemency; for, 
ever afterward, he was loyal and faithful to the 
King. The Danes undsr him were faithful 
too. They plundered and burned no more, but 
worked like honest men. They plowed, and 
sowed, and reaped, and led good honest En- 
glish lives. And I hope the children of those 
Danes played, many a time, with Saxon chil- 
dren in the sunny fields; and that Danish young 
men fell in love with Saxon girls, and married 
them ; and that English travelers, benighted at 
the doors of Danish cottages, often went in for 
shelter until morning; and that Danes and Sax- 
ons sat by the red fire, friends, talking of King 
Alfred the Great. 

All the Danes were not like these under 
Guthrum; for, after some years, more of them 
came over, in the old plundering and burning- 
way— among them a fierce pirate of the name of 
Hastings, who had the boldness to sail up the 
Thames to Gravesend, with eighty ships. For 
three j-ears there was a war with these Danes; 
and there was a famine in the country, too, and 
a plague, both upon human creatures and beasts. 
But King Alfred, whose mighty heart never 
failed him, built large ships nevertheless, with 
which to pursue the pirates on the sea; aud he 
encouraged his soldiers, by his brave example, 
to fight Valiantly against them on the shore. At 
last he drove them all away ; and then there was 
repose in England. 

As great and good in peace as he was great 
and good in war, King Alfred never rested 
from his Vooi'8 to improve his people. He loved 
to talk with clever men, and with travelers from 
foreign countries, and to write down what they 
told him, for his people to read. He had studied 
Latin after learning to read English, and now 
another of his labors was, to translate Latin 
books into the English-Saxon tongue, that bis 
people might be interested and improved by 
their contents. He made just laws, that they 
might live more happily aud freely ; he turned 
away all partial j udges, that no wrong might 



be done them; he was so careful of their prop- 
erty, aud punished robbers so severely, that it 
was a common thing to say that under the great 
King Alfred, garlands of golden chains and 
jewels might have hung across the streets, and 
no man would have touched one. He founded 
schools ; he patiently heard causes himself in his 
Court of Justice; the great desires of his heart 
were, to do right to all his subjects, and to leave 
England better, wiser, happier in all ways, then 
he found it. His industry in these efforts was 
quite astonishing. Every day he divided into 
certain portions, and in each portion devoted 
himself to a certain pursuit. That he might di- 
vide his time exactly, he had wax torches or 
candles made, which were all of the same size, 
were notched across at regular distances, and 
were always kept burning. Thus, as the can- 
dles burnt down, he divided the day into 
notches, almost accurately as we now divide it 
into hours upon the clock, But, when the can- 
dles were first invented, it was found that the 
wind and draughts of air, blowing into the pal- 
ace through the doors and windows, and 
through the chinks in the walls, caused them 
to gutter and burn unequally. To prevent this, 
the King had them put into cases formed of 
wood and white horn. And these were the first 
lanterns ever made in England. 

All this time he was afflicted with a terrible 
unknown disease, which caused him violent 
and frequent pain that nothing could relieve. 
He bore it, as he had borne all the troubles of 
his life, like a brave good man, until he was 
fifty-three years old ; and then, having reigned 
thirty years, he died. He died in the year nine 
hundred and one; but long ago as that is, his 
fame and the love and gratitude with whieh his 
subjects regarded him, are freshly remembered 
to the present hour. 

In the next reign, which was the reign of Ed- 
ward, surnamed The Elder, who was chosen in 
council to succeed, a nephew of King Alfred 
troubled the country by trying to obtain the 
throne. The Danes in the East of England took 
part with this usurper (perhaps because they 
had honored his uncle so much, and honored 
him for his uncle's sake), and there was hard 
fighting; but, the King, with the assistance of 
his sister, gained the day, and reigned in peace 
for four-and-twenty years. He gradually ex- 
tended his power over the "whole of England, 
and so the Seven Kingdoms were united into 
one. 

When England thus became one kingdom, 
ruled over by one Saxon king, the Saxons had 
been settled in the country more than four hun- 
dred and fifty years. Great changes had taken 
place in its customs during that time. The 
Saxons were still greedy eaters and great drink- 
ers, and their feasts were often of a noisy and 
drunken kind; but many new comforts, and 
even elegances, had become known, and^were 
fast increasing. Hangings fo* the walls of 
rooms, wherein these modern days, we paste 
up paper, are known to have been sometimes 
made of silk, ornamented with birds and flowers 
in needlework. Tables and chairs were cu- 
riously carved in different woods; were some- 
times decorated with gold or silver; sometimes 
eveu made of those precious metals. Knives and 
spoons were used at table; golden ornaments 
were worn— with silk and cloth, and golden 
tissues and embroideries; dishes were made of 
gold and silver, brass and bone. There were 
varieties of drinking horns, bedsteads, musical 
instruments. A harp was passed round, at a 
feast, like the drinking bowl, from guest to 
guest; and each one usually sang or played 
when his turn came. Tlie weapons of the Sax- 
ons were stoutly made, and among them was a 
terrible iron hammer that gave deadly blows, 
and was long remembered. The Saxons them- 
selves were a handsome people. The men were 
proud of their long fair hair, parted on the fore- 
head; their ample beards, their fresh complex- 
ions, and clear eyes. The beauty of the Saxon 
women filled all England with a new delight 
and grace. 

I have more to tell of the Saxons yet, but I 
stop to say this now, because, under the Great 
Alfred, all the best points of the English-Saxon 
character were first encouraged, and in him first 
shown. It has been the greatest character 
among the nations of the earth. Wherever the 
descendants of the Saxon race have gone, have 
sailed, or otherwise made their way, even to the 
remotest regions of the world, they have been 
patient, persevering, never, to be broken in 
spirit, never to be turned aside from enterprises 
on which they have resolved. In Europe, Asia, 
Africa, America, the whole world over; in the 



desert, in the forest, on the sea; scorched by a 
burning sun, or frozen by ice that never melts; 
the Saxon blood remains unchanged, Where- 
soever that race goes, there law, and industry, 
and safety for life aud property, and all the 
great results of steady perseverance, are certain 
to arise. 

I pause to think with admiration of the noble 
King who, in his single person, possessed all the 
Saxon virtues Whom misfortune could not 
subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose 
perseverance nothing could shake: Who ^ as 
hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. 
Who loved justice, freedom, truth, and knowl- 
edge. Who, in his care to instruct his people, 
probably did more to preserve the beautiful old 
Saxon language than I can imagine. Without 
whom, the English tongue in which I tell this 
story might have wanted half its meaning. As 
it is said that his spirit still inspires some of our 
best English laws, so, let you and I pray that it 
may animate our English hsarts, at least to this 
— to resolve, when we see any of our fellow 
creatures left in ignorance, that we will do our 
best, while life is in us, to have them taught; 
and to tell those rulers whose duty it is to teach 
them, and who neglect their duty, that they 
have profited veiy little by all the years that 
have rolled awa3* since the year nine hundred 
and one, and that they are far behind the bright 
example of King Alfred the Great. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLAND UNDEK ATHELSTAN AND THE SIX 
BOY-KINGS. 

Athelstan the son of Edward the Elder, 
succeeded that king. He reigned only fifteen 
years; but he .remembered the glory of his 
grandfather, the great Alfred, and governed 
England well. He reduced the turbulent people 
of Wales, and obliged them to pay him a trib- 
ute in money and in cattle, and to send him 
their best hawks and hounds. He was victo- 
rious over the Cornish men, who were not yet 
quiet under the Saxon government. He restored, 
such of the old laws as were good, and had fall- 
en into disuse; made some wise new laws, and 
took care of the poor and weak. A strong alli- 
ance, made against him by Anlaf a Danish 
prince, 'Constantine King of the Soots, and the 
people of North Wales, he broke and defeated 
in- one great battle, long famous for the vast 
numbers slam in it. After that, he had a quiet 
reign; the lords and ladies about him had leis- 
ure to become polite and agreeable; and foreign 
princes were glad (as they have sometimes been 
since) to come to England on visits to the En- 
glish court. 

When Athelstan died, at forty-seven years 
old, his brother Edmund, who was only eight- 
een, became King. He was the first of six boy- 
kings, as you will presently know. 

They called him the Magnificent, because he 

showed a taste for improvement aud refinement. 

But he was beset by the Danes, and had a short 

and troubled reign, which came to a troubled 

end. One night, when he was feasting in his 

hall, and had eaten much and drunk deep, he 

saw, among the company, a noted robber named 

Leof, who had been banished from England. 

I Made very angry by the boldness of this man, 

the King' turned to his cup bearer, and said 

" There is a robber sitting at the table yonder, 

who, for his crimes, is an outlaw in the land — 

1 a hunted wolf, whose life any man may take, at 

anytime. Command that robber to depart!" 

| " I will not depart!" said Leof. " No?" cried 

(the King. "No, by the Lord!" said Leof. 

i Upon that the King rose from his seat, and, 

1 making passionately at the robber, and seizing 

him by his long hair, tried to throw him clown. 

i But the robber had a dagger underneath bis 

| cloak, and, in the scuffle, stabbed the King to 

death. That done, he set his back against the 

wall, and fought so desperately, that although 

j he was soon cut to pieces by the King's armed 

men, and the wall and pavement were splashed 

with his blood, yet it was not before he had 

killed and wounded many of them. You may 

imagine what rough lives the kings of 'hose 

times led, when one of them could struggle, 

half- drunk, with a public robber in his own 

clining-hall and be stabbed in presence of the 

company who ate and drank with him. 

Then succeeded the boy-king Edred, who was 
weak and sickly in body, but of a strong mind. 
And his armies fought the Northmen, the 
Danes,- and Norwegians, or the Sea-iviugs, aa 
they were called, and beat them for the time. 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



And, in Dine died, and passed 

away. 

Then came Mivy, fifteen years 

of age; but the real kin. who had the real 
power, was a monk named Dunstan — a clever 
priest, a little mad, and not a little proud and 
cruel. 

Dunstan was then Abbot of Glastonbury Ab- 
bey, whither the body of King Edmund the 
Magnificent w T as carried to be buried. While 
yet a boy, he had got out of his bed one night 
(being then in a fever), and walked about Glas- 
tonbury Church wheu it was under repair; and, 
because he did not tumble off some scaffolds 
that were there, and break his neck, it was re- 
ported that he had been shown over the building 
hy an angel. He had also made a harp that was 
said to play of itself— which it very likely did, 
as iEolian Harps, which are played bj the wind, 
and are understood now. always do. For these 
wonders he had been once denounced by his 
enemies, who were jealous of his favor with the 
late King Athelstan, as a magician; and he had 
been waylaid, bound hand and foot, and thrown 
into a marsh. But he got out again somehow, 
to cause a great deal of trouble yet. 
The priests of those days, were generally, the 
only scholars. They were learned in many 
things. Having to make their own convents 
aud monasteries on uncultivated grounds that 
were granted to them by the crown, it was nec- 
essary that they should be good farmers and 
good gardeners, or their lands would have been 
too poor to support them. For the decoration of 
the chapels where thev prayed, and for the com- 
fort of the refectories wheie they ale and drank, 
it was necessary that there should be good car- 
penters, good smiths, good painters, among 
them. For their greater safety in sickness and 
accident, living alone by themselves in solitary 
places, it was necessary that they should study 
the virtues of plants and herbs, 4ud should know 
how to dress cuts, burns, scalds, aud bruises, 
and how to set broken limbs. Accordingly, 
the}' taught themselves, and one another, a 
great- variety of useful arts; aud became skillful 
in agriculture, medicine, surgery, and handi- 
craft. Aud when they wanted the aid of any 
little piece of machinery, which would be sim- 
ple enough now, but was marvelous then, to im- 
pose a trick upon the poor peasants, they knew 
very well how to make it; and did make it niany 
a time and often, I have no doubt. 

Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, was 
one of the most sagacious of these monks. He 
was an ingenious smith, and worked at a forge 
in •■> little cell. This cell was made too short to 
admit of his lying at full length when he went 
to sleep— as if that did any good to anybody! — 
tind he used to tell the most extraordinary lies 
about demons and spirits, who, he said, came 
(here to persecute him. For instance, he related 
that, one day when he was at work, the devil 
looked in at the little window, aud tried to 
tempt him to lead a life of idle pleasure; where- 
upon, having his pincers in the fire, red-hot, he 
seized the devil by the nose, and put him to such 
pain, that his bellowiugs were heard for miles 
and miles. Some people are inclined to think 
this nonsense a part of Dunstan's madness (for 
his head never quite recovered the fever), but 
1 think not. I observe that it induced the igno- 
rant people to consider him a holy man, and 
that it made him very powerful. Which was 
exactly what he always wanted. 

On the day of the coronation of the handsome 
boy-king Edwy, it was remarked by Odo, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury (who was a Dane by 
birth,) that the King quietly left the coronation 
feast, while all the company were there. Odo, 
much displeased, sent his friend Dunstan to seek 
him Dunstan, finding him in the company of 
his beautiful young wife Elgiva, and her moth- 
er Ethelgiva, a good and virtuous lady, not 
only grossly abused them, but dragged the 
young King back into the f easting-half by force. 
Some again, think Dunstan did this because the 
young King's fair wife was his own cousin, and 
the monks objected to people marrying their own 
cousins, but I believe he did it because he was an 
imperious, audacious, ill conditioned priest, who, 
having loved a young lady himself before he be- 
came a scur monk, hated all love now, and 
everything belonging to it. 

The young King was quite old enough to feel 
this insult. Dunstan had beeu treasurer in the 
last reign and he soon charged Dunstan with 
having taken some of the last king's money. 
The Glastonbury Abbot fled to Belgium (very 
narrowly escaping some pursuers who were sent 
to put out his eyes, as you will wish they had, 
when j ou read what follows), and his abbey was 



given to priests who were married ; whom he al- 
ways, both before and afterward, opposed. But 
he quickly conspired with his friend, Odo the 
Dane, to" set up the King's j'oung brother, 
Edgar; as his rival for the throne; and, not con- 
tent with this revenge, he caused the beautiful 
Queen Elgiva, though a lovely girl of only 
seventeen or eighteen, to be stolen from one of 
the Royal Palaces, branded in the cheek with a 
red-hot iron, and sold into slavery in Ireland. 
But the Irish people pitied and befriended her; 
and they said, " Let us restore the girl-queen to 
the boy-king, and make the young lovers hap- 
py!" aud they cured her of her cruel wound, 
aud sent her home as beautiful as before. But 
the villain Dunstan, and that other villain, Odo, 
caused her to be waylaid at Gloucester as she 
was joyfully hurrying to join her husband, and 
to be hacked and hewn with swords, and to be 
barbarously maimed and lamed, and left to die. 
AVhen Edwy the Fair (his people called him so, 
because he was so young and handsome) heard 
of her dreadful fate, he died of a broken heart; 
and so the pitiful story of the poor young wife 
and husband ends ! Ah ! Better to be two cot- 
tagers in these better times than King and 
Queen of England in those bad days, though 
never so fair ! 

Then came the boy-king Edgar, called the 
Peaceful, fifteen years old. Dunstan, being- 
still the real king, drove all married priests out 
of the monasteries and abbeys, and replaced 
them by solitary monks like himself, of the rigid 
order called the Benedictines. He made hiin- 
seif Archbishop of Canterbury, for his greater 
glory; and exercised such power over the 
neighboring British princes, and so collected 
them about the King, that once, when the King 
held his court at Chester, and went on the river 
Dee to visit the monastery of St. John, the eight 
oars of his boat were pulled (as the people used 
to delight in relating in stories and songs) by 
eight crowned kings, and steered by the King 
of England. As Edgar was very obedient to 
Dunstan and the monks, they took great pains 
to represent him as the best of kings. But he 
was really profligate, debauched, and vicious. 
He once forcibly carried off a young; lady from 
the convent at Wilton; and Dunstan, pretending 
to be very much shocked, condemned him not 
to wear his crown upon his head for seven years 
— no great punishment, 1 dare say, as it can 
hardly have been a more comfortable ornament 
to wear than a stewpan without a handle. His 
marriage with his second wife, Elfrida, is one 
of the worst events of his reign. Hearing of the 
beauty of this lady, he dispatched his favorite 
courtier, Athelwold, to her father's castle in 
Devonshire, to see if she were really as charm- 
ing as fame reported. Now, she was so exceed- 
ingly beautiful that Athelwold fell in love with 
her himself, and married her; but he told the 
King that she was only rich — not handsome. 
The King, suspecting the truth when they came 
home, resolved to pay the newly-married couple 
a visit; aud, suddenly, told Athelwold to pre- 
pare for his immediate coming. Athelwold, 
terrified, confessed to his young wife what he 
had said aud done, and implored her to disguise 
her beauty by some ugly dress or silly manner, 
that he might be safe from the King's anger. 
She promised that she would; but she was a 
proud woman, who would far rather have been 
a queen than the wife of a courtier. She dressed 
herself in her best dress, and adorned herself 
with her richest jewels; and, when the King- 
came presently, he discovered the cheat. So, he 
caused his false friend, Athelwold, to be mur- 
"flered in a wood, and married his widow, this 
bad Elfrida. Six or seven years afterward he 
died; and was.buried, as if he had been all that 
the monks said he was, in the Abbey of Glaston- 
bury, which he — or Dunstan for hirii — had much 
enriched. 

England, in one part of this reign, was so 
troubled by wolves, which, driven out of the 
open country, hid themselves in the mountains 
of Wales, when they were not attacking travel- 
ers aud animals, that the tribute payable by the 
Welsh people was forgiven them, on condition 
of their producing, every year, three hundred 
w T olves' heads. And the Welshmen were so 
sharp upon the wolves, to save their money, that 
in four years there was not a wolf left. 

Then came the .boy-king Edward, called the 
Martyr, from the manner of his death. Elfrida 
had a son, named Ethelred, for whom she claimed 
the throne; but Dunstan did not choose to favor 
him, and he made Edward king. The boy was 
hunting, one day, dowm in Dorsetshire, when 
he rode near to Corfe Castle, where Elfrida and 
Ethelred lived. Wishing to see them kindly, 



he rode aw T ay from his attendants and galloped 
to the castle gate, where he arrived at twilight, 
and blew his hunting-horn. " You are wel- 
come, dear King," said Elfrida, coming out, 
with her brightest smiles. " Pray you dismount 
and enter." " Not so, dear madam," said the 
King. "My company will miss me, and fear 
that I have met with some harm. Please you to 
give me a cup of wine, that I may drink here, in 
the saddle, to you and to my little brother, and 
so ride away with the good speed I have made in 
riding here." Elfrida, going in to bring the 
wine, whispered an armed servant, one of her 
attendants, who stole out of the darkening gate- 
way, and crept round behind the King's horse. 
As the King raised the cup to his lips, saying 
" Health!" to the wicked woman who was smil- 
ing on him, to his innocent brother whose hand 
she held in hers, and who was only ten years 
old, this armed man made a spring, and stabbed 
him in the back. He dropped the cup, and 
spurred his horse away; but, soon fainting with 
loss of blood, dropped from the saddle, and, in 
his fall, entangled one of his feet in the stirrup. 
The frightened horse dashed on; trailing his 
rider's curls upon the ground; dragging his 
smooth young face through ruts, and stones, and 
briers, and fallen leaves, and mud; until the 
hunters, tracking the animal's course by the 
King's blood, caught his bridle, and released the 
disfigured body. 

Then came the sixth and last of the boy-kings, 
Ethelred, whom Elfrida, when he cried out at 
the sight of his murdered brother riding away 
from the castle gate, unmercifully beat with a 
torch which she snatched from one of the attend- 
ants. The people so disliked this boy, on ac- 
count of his cruel mother and the murder she 
had done to promote him, that Dunstan would 
not have had him for king, but would have made 
Edgitha, the daughter of the dead King Edgar, 
and of the lady whom he stole out of the con- 
vent at Wilton, Queen of England, if she would 
have consented. But she knew the stories of the 
youthful kings too well, and would not be per- 
suaded from the convent where she lived in 
peace: so Dunstan put Ethelred on the throne, 
having no one else to put there, and gave him 
the nickname of The Unready — knowing that he 
wanted resolution and firmness. 

At first Elfrida possessed great influence over 
the young King, but, as he grew older and came 
of age, her influence declined. The infamous 
woman, not having it in her power to do any 
more evil, then retired from court, and, accord- 
ing to the fashion of the time, built churches 
and monasteries to expiate her guilt. As if a 
church, with a steeple reaching to the very stars, 
would have been any sign of true repentance 
for the blood of the poor boy, whose murdered 
form was trailed at his horse's heels! As if she 
could have buried her wickedness beneath the 
senseless stones of the whole world, piled up one 
upon another, for the monks to live in! 

About the ninth or tenth year of this reign, 
Dunstan died. He was growing old then, but 
was as stern and artful as ever. Two circum- 
stances that happened in connection with him, 
in this reign of Ethelred, made a great noise. 
Once, he was present at a meeting of the 
Church, when the question was discussed 
whether priests should have permission to mar- 
ry; and, as he sat with his head hung down, 
apparently thinking about it, a voice seemed to 
come out of a crucifix in the room, and warn 
the meeting to be of his opinion. This was 
some juggling of Dunstan's, and was probably 
his own voice disguised. But he played off a 
worse juggle than- that, soon afterward; for, 
another meeting being held on the same subject, 
aud he and his supporters being seated on one 
side of a great room, and their opponents on 
the other, he rose and said, " To Christ himself, 
as Judge, do I commit this cause!" Immediate- 
ly on these words being spoken, the floor where 
the opposite party sat gave way, and some were 
killed and many wounded. You may be pretty 
sure that it had been weakened under Dunstan's 
direction, and that it fell at Dunstan's signal. 
His part of the floor did not go down. No, no. 
He was too good a workman for that. 

When he died, the monks settled that he was 
a Saint, and called him St. Dunstan ever after- 
ward They might just as well have settled 
that he was a coach-horse, and could just as 
easily have called him one. 

Ethelred the Unready was glad enough, I dare 
say, to be rid of this holy saint; but, left to 
himself, he was a poor weak king, and his reign 
was a reign of defeat and shame. The restless 
Danes, led by Sweyn, a son of the Kina: of Den- 
mark who had quarreled with his father and 



8 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



had been banished from home, again came into 
England, and, year after year, attacked and de- 
spoiled large towns. To coax these sea-kings 
away, the weakEthelred paid them money; but, 
the more money he paid, the more money the 
Danes wanted. At first, he gave them ten thou- 
sand pounds; on their next invasion, sixteen 
thousand pounds; on their next invasion, four- 
and-twenty thousand pounds; to pay which 
large sums, the unfortunate English people were 
heavily taxed. But, as the Danes still came 
back and wanted more, he thought it would be 
a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign 
family that would help him with soldiers. So, 
in the year one thousand and two, he courted 
and married Emma, the sister of Richard Duke 
of Normandy : a lady who was called the Flower 
of Normandy. 

And now a terrible deed was done in Eng- 
land, the like of which was never done on En- 
glish ground before or since. On the thirteenth 
of November, in pursuance of secret instruc- 
tions sent by the King over the whole country, 
the inhabitants of every town and city armed, 
and murdered all the Danes who were their 
neighbors. Young and old, babies and soldiers, 
men and women, every Dane was killed. No 
doubt there were among: them many ferocious 
men who had done the English great wrong, 
and whose pride and insolence, in swaggering 
in the houses of the English and insulting their 
wives and daughters, had become unbearable; 
but no doubt there were also among them many 
peaceful Christian Danes who had married En- 
glish women, and become like En dish meQ. 
They were all slain, even to Gunhilda, the sister 
of the King of Denmark, married to an English 
lord; who was first obliged to seethe murder of 
her husband and her child, and then was killed 
herself. 

When the King of the sea-kings heard of this 
deed of blood, he swore that he would have a 
great revenge. He raised an army, and a might- 
ier fleet of ships than everyet had sailed to Eng- 
land; and in all his army there was not a slave 
or an old man, but every soldier was a free man, 
and the son of a free man, and in the prime of 
life, and sworn to be revenged upon the En- 
glish nation for the massacre of that dread thir- 
teenth of November, when his countrymen and 
countrywomen, and the little children whom 
they loved, were killed with fire and sword. 
And so, the sea-kings came to England in many 
great ships, each bearing the flag of its own 
commander. Golden eagles, ravens, dragons, 
dolphins, beasts of prey, threatened England 
from the prows of those ships, as they came 
onward through the water; and were reflected 
in the shining shields that hung upon their sides. 
The ship that bore the standard of the King of 
the sea-kings was carved and painted like a 
mighty serpent; and the King in his anger 
prayed that the gods in whom he trusted might 
all desert him, if his serpent did not strike its 
fangs into England's heart. 

And indeed it did. For, the great army land- 
ing from the great fleet, near Exeter, went for- 
ward, laying England waste, and striking 
their lances in the earth as they advanced, or 
throwing them into rivers, in token of their 
making all the island theirs. In remembrance 
of theblaek November night when tire-Danes 
were murdered, wheresoever the invaders came, 
they made the Saxons prepare and spread for 
them great feasts: and when they had eaten 
those feasts, and had drunk a curse to England 
with wild rejoicings, they drew their swords, 
and killed their Saxon entertainers, and marched 
on. For six long years they carried on this war ; 
burn: ; :?' the crops, farm-houses, barns, mills, 
granaries; killing the laborers in the fields; 
preventing the seed from being sown in the 
ground; causing famine and starvation; leaving 
only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes, where 
they had found rich towns. To crown this mis- 
ery, English officers and men deserted, and even 
the favorites of Ethelred the Unready, becom- 
ing traitors, seized many of the English ships, 
turned pirates against their own country, and, 
aided'by a storm, occasioned the loss of nearly 
the whole English navy. 

There was but one man of note, at this mis- 
erable pass, who was true to his country and 
the feeble King. He was a priest, and a brave 
one. For twenty days the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury defended that city against its Danish 
besiegers ; and, when a traitor in the town threw 
the gates open and admitted them, he said, in 
chains, " 1 will not buy my life with money, 
that must be extorted from the suffering people. 
Do with me what you please!" Again and 



again he steadily refused to purchase his release 
with gold wrung from the poor. 

At last, the Danes being tired of this, and be- 
ing assembled at a drunken merrymaking, had 
him brought into the i'easting-hall 

" Now, bishop," they said, " wewant gold!" 

He looked round on the crowd of angry faces : 
from the shaggy beards close to him," to the 
shaggy beards against the walls, where men 
were mounted on tables and forms to see him 
over the heads of others: and he knew that his 
time was come. 

" I have no gold," said he. 

" Get it, bishop! ' they all thundered. 

" Tliat I have often told you I will not," said 
he. 

They gathered closer round him, threatening, 
but he stood unmoved. Then, one man struck 
him ; then, another ; then a cursing soldier picked 
up from a heap in a corner of the hall, where 
fragments had been rudely thrown at dinner, a 
great ox-bone and cast it at his face, from which 
the blood came spurting forth; then, others ran 
to the same heap, and knocked him down with 
other bones, and bruised and battered him; un- 
til one soldier whom he had baptized (willing, 
as I hope for the sake of that soldier's soul, to 
shorten the sufferings of the good man) struck 
him dead with his battle-ax. 

If Ethelred had had the heart to emulate the 
courage of this noble archbishop, he might have 
done something yet. But he paid the Danes 
forty-eight thousand pounds instead, and gained 
so little by the cowardly act, that Sweyn soon 
afterward came over to subdue all England. 
So broken was the attachment of the English 
people, by this time, to their incapable King 
and their forlorn country which could not pro- 
tect them, that they welcomed Sweyn oh all 
sides as a deliverer. London faithfully stood out 
as long as the King was within its walls; but, 
when he sneaked away, it also welcomed the 
Dane. Then, all was over; and the King took 
refuge abroad with the Duke of Normandy, 
who had already given shelter to the King's 
wife, once the Flower of that country, and to 
her children, - 

Still the English people, in spite of their sad 
sufferings, could not quite forget the great King 
Alfred and the Saxon race. When Sweyn died 
suddenly, in a little more than a month after he 
had been proclaimed King of England, they gen- 
erously sent to Ethelred, to say that they would 
have him for their King again, "if he would only 
govern them better than he had governed them 
before." The Unready, instead of coming 
himself, sent Edward, one of his sons, to make 
promises for him. At last, he followed, and 
the English declared him King. The Danes de- 
clared Canute, the son of Sweyn, King. Thus, 
direful war began again, and lasted for three 
years, when the Unready died. And I know 
of nothing better that he did, in all his reign of 
eigbt-and-thirty years. 

Was Canute to- be King now? Not over the 
Saxons, they said; they must have Edmund, one 
of the sons of the Unready, who was surnamed 
Ironside, because of his strength and stature. 
Edmund and Canute thereupon fell-to, and 
fought five battles— Oh, unhappy England, 
what a fighting-ground it was! — and then Iron- 
side, who was a big man, proposed to Canute, 
who was a little man, that they two should 
fight it out in single combat. If Canute 
had been the big man, he would probably 
have said yes, but,"being the little man, he de- 
cidedly said no. However, he declared that he 
was willing to divide the kingdom — to take all 
that lay north of Watling Street, as the old 
Roman military road from Dover to Chester 
was called, and to give Ironside all that Jay 
south of it. Most men being weary of so 
much bloodshed, this was done. But Canute 
soon became sole King of England ; for Iron- 
side died suddenly within two months. Some 
think that he was killed, and killed by Canute's 
orders. No one knows. 



brother." He was s 
enemies, that he 
pretty large family 
was strongly incline 
ward, two children 



- ting down his 
)t together a. 
jrothers. He 
rand and Ed- 
tronside; but, 



IS of 
being afraid. to do so in jLngjauu, he sent them 
over to the King of Sweden, with a request that 
the King would be so good as " dispose of 
them." If the King of Sweden had been like 
many, many other men of that day, he would 
have had their innocent throats cut; but he was 
a kind man, and brought them up tenderly. 

Normandy ran much in Canute's mind. In 
Normandy were the two children of the late 
King— Edward and Alfred by name; and their 
uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown 
for them. But the Duke showed so little incli- 
nation to do so now, that he proposed to Canute 
to marry his sister, the widow of The Unready ;. 
who,^ being but a showy flower, and caring for 
nothing so much as becoming a queen again, 
left her children, and was wedded to him. 

Successful and triumphant, assisted by the 
valor of the English in his foreign wars, and 
with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute 
had a prosperous reign, and made many im- 
provements. He was a poet and a musician. 
He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood 
he had shed at first; and went to Rome in a 
Pilgrim's dress, by way of washing it out. He 
gave a>great deal of money to foreigners on his 
journey ; but he took it from the English be- 
fore he started. On the whole, however, he 
certainly became a far better man when he had 
no opposition to contend with, and was as great 
a king as England had known for some time. 
The old writers of history relate how that 

! Canute was one day disgusted with his courtiers 
for their flattery, and how he caused his chair 
to be set on the seashore, and feigned to com- 

\ maud the tide as it came up not to wet the edge 
of his robe, for the land was his; how the tide 
came up, "of course, without regarding him; 
and how he then turned to his flatterers, and re- 
buked them, saying, what was the might of 
any earthly king to the might of the Creator, 

| who could say unto the sea. " Thus far shalt 
thou go, and no further?" We may learn from 
this, 1 think, that a little sense will go a long 

j waj' in a. king; and that courtiers are not easily 
cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for it. 
If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long- 
before, that (he King was fond of flattery, they 

; would have known better than to offer it in such 
large doses. And if they had no; known that 
he was vain of this speech (anything but a won- 
derful speech, it seems to me, if a good child had 
made it), they would not have been at such great 
pains to repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the 
seashore together; the King's chair sinking in 
the sand ; the King in a mighly good humor 
with his own wisdom; and the courtiers pre- 
tending to be quite stunned by it! 
It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go " thus 

' far, and no further. " The great command goes 
forth to all the kings upon the earth, and went 
to Canute in the year one thousand^ and thirty- 

i five, and stretched him dead upon his bed. 
Beside it stood his Norman ^wife. Perhaps, as 
the King looked his last upon her, he who had 
so often thought distrustfully of ISJormandy long 

| ago, thought once more of the two exiled Princes 
in their uncle's court, and of Hie little favor 

j they could feei for either Danes or Saxons, and 

■ of a rising cloud in Normandy that slowly 
moved toward England, 



CHAPTER V. 

ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE. 

Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a 
merciless king at first. After he had clasped the 
hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sin- 
cerity with which he swore to be just and good 
to them in return for their acknowledging 
him. he denounced andslew many of them, as 
well as many relations of the late King. " He 
who brings me the head of one of my enemies," 
he used to say, " shall be dearer to me than i'. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ENGLAND UNDBK HAROLD HAREFOOT, HARDI- 
CANUTE, AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. 

Canute left three sons, l^'narne Sweyn, Har- 
old, and Hardicanute; but his Queen, Emma, 
once the Flower of Normandy, was the mother 
of only Hardicanute. Canute had wished his 
dominions to be divided between the three, and 
had wished Harold to have England; but the 
Saxon people in the South of England, headed by 
a nobleman with great possessions called the 
powerful Earl Godwin (who is said to have been 
originally a poor cow-boy), opposed this, and 
desired to have^-instead. either Hardicanute, or - 
one of the two exiled Princes who were over in 
Normandy. It seemed so certain that there 
would be more bloodshed to settle this dispute, 
that many people left their homes, and took 
refuge in the woods and swamps. Happily, 
however, it was agreed to refer the whole ques- 
tion to a great meeting at Oxford, which decided 
that Harold should have all the country north 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



of the Thames, with London for his capital city, 
and that Hardicanute should have all the south. 
The quarrel was so arranged; and, as Hardi- 
canute was in Denmark, troubling himself very 
little about anything but eating and getting 
drunk, his mother and Earl Godwin governed 
the south for him. 
They had hardly begun to do so, and the 



Confessor got the throne. The Earl got more 
power and more land, and his daughter Editha 
was made Queen; for it was a part of their 
compact that the King should take her for his 
wife. 

But, although she was a gentle lady, in all 
things worthy to be beloved — good, beautiful, 
sensible, and kind — the King from the first 



trembling people who had hidden themselves neglected her Her father and her six proud 
were scarcely at home again, when Edward, the brothers, resenting this cold treatment, harassed 
elder of the two exiled Princes, came over from I the King greatly by exerting all their power to 



Normandy whh a few followers, to claim the 
English crown. His mother, Emma, however, 
who only cared for her last son, Hardicanute, in- 
stead of assisting him, as he .expected, opposed 
him so strongly with all her influence that he 
was very soon glad to get safely back. His 
brother Alfred was not so fortunate. Believ- 
ing in an affectionate letter, written some time 
afterward to him and his brother, in his mother's 
name (but whether really with or without his 
mother's knowledge is now uncertain), he al- 
lowed himself to be tempted over to England, 
with a good force of soldiers, and landing on 
the Kentish coast, and being met and welcomed 
by Earl Godwin, proceeded into Surrey, as 
far as the town of Guildford. Here, he and his 
men halted in the evening to rest, having still 
the Earl in their company; who had ordered 
lodgings and good cheer for them. But, in the 
dead of the night, when they were off their 



make him unpopular. Having lived so long in 
Normandy, he preferred the Normans to the 
English. He made a Norman Archbishop, and 
Norman Bishops; his great officers and favorites 
were all Normans; he introduced the Norman 
fashions and the Norman language; in imitation 
of the state custom of Normandy, he attacbed a 
great seal to his state documents, instead of 
merely marking them, as the Saxon kings had 
done, with the sign of the cross — just as poor 
people, who have never been taught to write, 
now make the same mark for their names. All 
this the powerful Earl Godwin and his six proud 
sons represented to the people as disfavor shown 
toward the English; and thus they daily in- 
creased their own power, and daily diminished 
the power of the King. 

They were greatly helped by an event that 
occurred when he had reigned eight years. 
Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had married 



guard, being divided into small parties, sleeping the King's sister, came to England on a visit, 
soundly after a long march and a plentiful supper After staying at the court some time, he set 
in different houses, they were set upon by the forth, with his numerous train of attendants, to 
King's troops, and taken prisoners. Next return home. They were to embark at Dover, 
morning they were drawn out in a line, to the j Entering that peaceful town in armor, they took 
number of six hundred men, and were barbar- ; possession of the best bouses, and noisily de- 
ously tortured and killed ; with the exception of I manded to be lodged and entertained without 
■every tenth man, who was sold into slavery. | payment. One of the bold men of Dover, who 
As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was strip- ! would not endure to have these domineering 
ped naked, tied to a horse, and sent away into ' strangers jingling their heavy swords and iron 
the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of ■ corselets up and down his house, eating his meat 
his head, and where in a few days he miserably and drinking his strong liquor, stood iu his door 



died. I am not sure that the Earl had willfully 
entrapped him. but I suspect it strongly. 

Harold was now King all over England, though 
it is doubtful whether the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury (the greater part of the priests were Sax- 
ons, and not friendly to the Danes) ever con- 
sented to crown him. Crowned or uncrowned, 
with the Archbishop's leave or without it, he 
was King for four years; after which short 
reign he died, and was buried; having never 
done much in life but go a-hunting. He was 
such a fast runner at this his favorite sport, that 
the people called him Harold Harefoot. 

Hardicanute was then at Bruges, in Flanders, 
plotting, with his mother (who had gone over 
there after the cruel murder of Prince Alfred) 
for the invasion of England. The Danes and 
Saxnna, finding themselves without a king, and 
•dreading new disputes, made common cause, 
and joined in inviting him to occupy the throne. [ 
He consented, and soon troubled them enough; ' 
for he brought over numbers of Danes, and 
taxed the people so insupportably to enrich those I 
greedy favorites that there were many insurrec- ; 
tions, especially one at "Worcester, where the 
citizens rose and killed his tax-collectors; in re- 
venge for which he burned their city. He was 
a brutal king, whose first public act was to order 
the dead body of poor Harold Harefoot to be dug 
up beheaded, and thrown into the river. His end 
was worthy of such a beginning. He fell down 
drunk, with a goblet of wine in his hand, at a 
wedding-feast at Lambeth, given in honor of 
the marriage of his standard-bearer, a Dane j 
named Towed the Proud. And he never spoke 
again. 



way and refused admission to the first armed 
man who came there. The armed man drew, 
and wounded him. The man of Dover struck 
the armed man dead. Intelligence of what he 
had done, spreading through the streets to 
where the Count Eustace and his men were 
standing by their horses, bridle .in hand, they 
passionately mounted, galloped to the house, 
surrounded it, forced their way in (the doors 
and windows being closed when they came up), 
and killed the man of Dover at his own fireside. 
They then clattered through the streets, cutting 
down and riding over men, women, and chil- 
dren. This did not last long , you may believe. 
The men of Dover set upon them with great 
fury, killed nineteen of the foreigners, wounded 
manj' more, and, blockading the road to the port 
so that they should not embark, beat them out 
of the town by the way they had come. Here- 
upon, Count Eustace rides as hard as man can 
ride to Gloucester, where Edward is, surround- 
ed by Norman monks and Norman lords. 

"Justice!" cries the Count, "upon the men 
of Dover, who have sett upon and slain my 
people!" The King sends immediately for the 
powerful Earl Godwin, who happens, to be 
near; reminds him that Dover is under his 
government; and orders him to repair to Dover, 
and do military execution on the inhabitants. 
" It does not become you," says the proud Earl 
in reply, " to condemn without a hearing those 
whom you have sworn to protect. I will not 
do it." 

The King, therefore, summoned the Earl, on 
pain of banishment and loss of his titles and 
property, to appear before the court to answer 



Edward, afterward called by the monks The ' this disobedience. The Earl refused to appear. 
Confessor, suceeded; and his first act was to ! He, his eldest son Harold, and his second son 
oblige his mother Emma, who had favored him Sweyn, hastily raised as many fighting-men as 
so Utile, to retire into the country; where she their utmost power could collect, and demand- 
died some ten years afterward. He was the ed to have Count Eustace and his followers sur- 
exiled prince whose brother Alfred had been so \ rendered to the justice of the country. The 
foully killed. He had been invited over from ; Kiug, in his turn, refused to give them up, and 
Normandy by Hardicanute, in the course of his i raised a strong force. After some treaty and 
short reign of two years, and had been hand J delay, the troops of the great Earl and his sons 
somely treated at court. His cause was now | began to fall off. The Earl, with a part of 
favored by the powerful Earl Godwin, and he ! his family and abundance of treasure, sailed to 
was soon made King. This Earl had been sus- ! Flanders; Harold escaped to Ireland; and the 
pected by the people, ever since Prince Alfred's ' power of the great family was for that time 



cruel death; he had even been tried in the last 
reign for the Prince's murder, but had been 
pronounced not guilty; chiefly, as it was sup- 
posed, because of a present he had made to the 
swinish King, of a gilded ship with a figure- 
head of solid gold, and a crew of eighty splen- 
didly armed men. It was his interest to help 



gone in England. But, the people did not for- 
get them. 

Then, Edward the Confessor, with the true 
meanness of a mean spirit, visited his dislike 
of the once powerful father and sons upon the 
helpless daughter and sister, his unoffending 
wife, whom all who saw (her husband and his 



the new King with his power, if the new King monks excepted) loved. He seized rapaciously 

would help him against the popular distrust and upon her fortune and her jewels, and, allowing 

So they made a bargain. Edward the her only one attendant, confined her in a gloomy 



hatred. 



convent, of which a sister of his — no doubt an 
unpleasant lady after his own heart — was ab- 
bess or jailer. 

Having got Earl Godwin and his six sons 
well out of his way, the King favored the Nor- 
mans more than ever. He invited over Will- 
iam, Duke of Normandy, the son of that Duke 
who had received him and his murdered brother 
long ago, and of a peasant girl, a tanner's daugh- 
ter, with whom that Duke had fallen in love for 
her beauty as he saw her washing clothes in a 
brook. William, who was a great warrior, 
with a passion for fine horses, dogs, and arms, 
accepted the invitation; and the Normans in' 
England, finding themselves more numerous 
than ever when he arrived with his retinue, and 
held in still greater honor at court than before, 
became more and more haughty toward the peo- 
ple, and were more and more disliked by them. 

The old Earl Godwin, though he was abroad, 
knew well how the people felt; for, with part 
of the treasure he had carried away with him, 
he kept spies and agents in his pay all over Eng- 
land. Accordingly, he thought the time was 
come for fitting out a great expedition against 
the Norman-loving King. With it, he sailed to 
the Isle of Wight, where he was joined by his 
son Harold, the most gallant and brave of all 
his family. And so the father and son came 
sailing up the Thames to Southwark ; great num- 
bers of the people declaring for them, and shout- 
ing for the English Earl and the English Har- 
old, against the Norman favorites! 

The King was at first as blind and stubborn 
as kings usual ly have been whensoever they have 
been in the hands of monks. But the people 
rallied so thickly round the old Earl and his 
son, and the old Earl was so steady in demand- 
ing without bloodshed the restoration of him- 
self and his family to their rights, that at last 
the court took the alarm. The Norman Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, and the Norman Bishop 
of London, surrounded by their retainers, fought 
their way out of London, and escaped from Essex 
to France in a fishing-boat. The other Norman 
favorites dispersed in all directions. The old Earl 
and his sons (except Sweyn, who had committed 
crimes against the law) were restored to their 
possessions and dignities. Editha, the virtuous 
and lovely Queen of the insensible King, was 
triumphantly released from her prison, the con- 
vent, and once more sat in her chair of state, 
arrayed in the jewels of which, when she had 
no champion to support her rights, her cold- 
blooded husband had deprived her. 

The old Earl Godwin did not long enjoy his re- 
stored fortune. Be fell down in a fit at the 
King's table, and died upon the third day after- 
ward. Harold succeeded to his power, and to a 
far higher place in the attachment of the people 
than his father had ever held. By his valor he ' 
subdued the King's enemies in many bloody 
fights. He was vigorous against rebels in Scot- 
land — this was the time when Macbeth slew 
Duncan, upon which event our English Shakes- 
peare, hundreds of years afterward, wrote his 
great tragedy ; and he killed the restless Welsh 
King Griffith, and brought his head to England. 

What Harold was doing at sea, when he was 
driven on the French coast by a tempest, is not 
at all certain ; nor does it at all matter. That 
his ship was forced by a storm on that shore, 
and that he was taken prisoner, there is no 
doubt. In those barbarous days, all shipwrecked 
strangers were taken prisoners, and obliged to 
pay ransom. So, a certain Count Guy, who 
was the Lord of Ponthieu where Harold's dis- 
aster happened, seized him, instead of relieving 
him like a hospitable and Christian lord, as he 
ought to have done, and expected to make a 
very good thing of it. , 

But Harold sent off immediately to Duke 
"William of Normandy, complaining of this treat- 
ment; and the Duke no sooner heard of it than 
he ordered Harold to be escorted to the ancient 
town of Bouen, where he then was, and where 
he received him as an honored guest. Now, 
some writers tell us that Edward the Confessor, 
who was by this time old and had no children, 
had made a will, appointing Duke William of 
Normandy his successor, and had informed the 
Duke of his having done so. There is no doubt 
that he was anxious about his successor; because 
he had even invited over, from abroad, Edward 
the Outlaw, a son of Ironside, who had come 
to England with his wife and three children, 
but whom the King had strangely refused to 
see when he did come, and who had died in 
London suddenly (princes were terribly liable to 
sudden death iu those days), ami had been 
buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The King might 
possibly have made such a will ; or, having al- 



10 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



ways been fond of the Normans, he might have 
encouraged Norman William to aspire to the 
English crown, by something that he said to 
him when he was staying at the English court. 
But, certainly William did now aspire to it; 
and, knowing that Harold would be a powerful 



" Bide back!" said the brother, «! ! /and tell 
King Harold to make ready for the fight!" 

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King 
Harold led against that force that his brother, 
and the Norwegian King, and every chief of 
note in all their host, except the Norwegian 
rival, he called together a great assembly of his King's son, Olave, to whom he gave honora- 
nobles offered Harold his daughter Adele in ble dismissal, were left dead upon the field, 
marriage, informed him that he meant, on King | The victorious army marched to York. As 
Edward's death, to claim the English crown as j King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst 
his own inheritance, and required Harold then l of all his company, a stir was heard at the 
and there to swear to aid him. Harold, being : doors; and messengers all covered with mire 
in the Duke's power, took this oath upon the | from riding far and fast through broken ground 
Missal, or Prayer-book. It is a good example ; came hurrying in to report that the Normans 
of the superstitions of the monks that this Mis- I had landed in England. 

sal, instead of being placed upon a table, was.) The intelligence was true. They had been 
placed upon a tub; which, when Harold had | tossed about by contrary winds, and some of 
sworn was uncovered, and shown to be full of j their ships had been wrecked. A part of their 
dead men's bones— bones, as the monks pre- I own shore, to which they had been driven back, 
tended, of saints. This was supposed to make j was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had 
Harold's oath a great deal more impressive and | once more made sail, led by the Duke's own gal- 
binding. As if the great name of the Creator , ley, a present from his wife, upon the prow 
of Heaven and earth could be made more solemn ; whereof the figure of a golden boy stood point- 
by a knucklebone, or a double tooth, or a j ing toward England. By day, the banner of 
finger nail of Dunstan! the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse-col- 

Within a week or two after Harold's return j ored sails, the gilded vanes, the many decora- 
to England, the dreary old Confessor was found , tions of this gorgeous! ship, had glittered in the 
to be dying. After wandering in his mind like ] sun and sunny water; by night, a light had 
a very weak old man, he died. As be had put , sparkled like a star at her masthead. And now, 
himself entirely in the hands of the monks ; encamped near Hastings, with their leader lying 
when he was alive, they praised him lustily j in the old Roman Castle of Pevensey, the En- 
when he was dead. Thev had gone so far, al- I glish retiring in all directions, the land for miles 
ready, as to persuade him that he could work ; around scorched and smoking, fired and pil- 
mirac'les; and had brought people afflicted with laged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful 
a bad disorder of the skin to him, to be touched ' and strong on English ground, 
and cured. This was called " touching for the j Harold broke up the feast and hurried to 
King's Evil," which afterward became a Royal \ London. Within a week, his army was ready, 
custom. You know, however, Who really j He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman 
touched the sick, and healed them; and you j strength. William took them, caused them to 



know His sacred name is not among the dusty 
line of human kings. 



be led through his whole camp, and then dis- 
missed. "The Normans," said these spies to 
Harold, ' ' are not bearded on the upper lip as 
we English are, but are shorn. They are 
priests." "My men," replied Harold with a 
laugh, " will find those priests good soldiers!" 

" The Saxons, " reported Duke William's out 
posts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed 
to retire as King Harold's army advanced, 

rush on us through their pillaged country 



said Duke 



CHAPTER VII. 

ENGLAND UNDER HAROLD THE SECOND, AND 
CONQUERED BY THE NORMANS. 

Hakold was crowned King of England on 
the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. 

He had good need to be quick about it. When | with the fury of_madmen." 
the news reached Norman William, hunting in! " Let them come, and come soon 
his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned : William. 

to his palace, called his nobles to council, and \ Some proposals for a reconciliation were 
presently sent embassadors to Harold, calling , made, but were soon abandoned. In the mid- 
on him to keep his oath and resign the crown. | die of the month of October, in the year one 
Harold would do no such thing. The barons . thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and the 
of France leagued together round Duke Will- j English came front to front. All night the 
iam for the invasion of England. Duke Will- 1 armies lay encamped before each other, in a part 
iam promised freely to distribute English wealth ! of the country then called Senlac, now called 
and English lands among them. The Pope sent (in remembrance of them) Battle. With the 
to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring first dawn of day they arose. There, in the 
containing a hair which he warranted to have faint light, were the English on a hill 



divided the pursuing body of the Enclish from 
the rest, and thus all tbat foremost portion of 
the English army fell, fighting bravely. The 
main body still remaining firm, heedless of the 
Norman arrows, and with their battle-axes cut- 
ting down the crowds of horsemen when they 
rode up, like forests of young trees, Duke Will- 
iam pretended to retreat. The eager English 
followed. The Norman army closed again, and 
fell upon them with great slaughter. 

" Still," said Duke William, " there are thou- 
sands of the English, firm as rocks around their 
King. Shoot upward, Norman archers, that 
your arrows may fall down upon their faces!" 

The sun rose high, and sank, and the battle 
still raged. Through all the wild October day 
the clash and din resounded in the air. In the 
red sunset, and in the white moonlight, heaps 
upon heaps of dead men lay strewn, a dreadful 
spectacle, all over the ground. King Harold, 
wounded with an arrow in the eye, was nearly 
blind. His brothers were already killed. 
Twenty Norman Knights, whose battered armor 
had flashed fiery and golden in the sunshine all 
day long, and now looked silvery in the moon- 
light, dashed forward to seize the Royal banner 
from the English Knights and soldiers, still 
faithfully collected round their blinded King. 
The King received a mortal wound, and 
dropped. The English broke and fled. The 
Normans rallied, and the day was lost. 

Oh, what a sight beneath the moon and stars, 
when lights were shining in the tent of the vic- 
torious Duke William, which was pitched near 
the spot where Harold fell — and he and his 
knights were carousing within — and soldiers 
with torches, going slowly to and fro without, 
sought for the corpse of Harold among piles of 
dead — and the Warrior, worked in golden thread 
and precious stones, lay low, all torn and soiled 
with blood — and the three Norman Lions kept 
watch over the field ! 



grown on"the head of St. Peter. He blessed the 
enterprise, and cursed Harold; and requested 
that the Normans would pay " Peter's Pence" 
— or a tax to himself of a penny a year on every 
house— a little more regularly in future, if they 
could make it convenient. 
King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, 



a wood 
behind'tbem; in their midst, the Royal banner, 
representing a fighting warrior, woven in golden 
thread, adorned with precious stones; beneath 
the banner, as it rustled in the wind, stood King 
Harold on foot, with two of his remaining 
brothers by his side; around them, still and 
silent asjhe dead, clustered the whole English 



who" was a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of '•■ army— every soldier covered by his shield, and 
Norway. This brother, and this Norwegian j bearing in his hand his dreaded English battle- 
King, joining their forces against England, with ! ax. 

Duke William's help, won a fight in which the | On an opposite hill, in three lines, archers, 
English were commanded by two nobles; and foot-soldiers, horsemen, was the Norman force, 
then besieged York. Harold, who was wailing i Of a sudden, a great battle-cry, " God help us!" 
for the Normans' on the coast at Hastings, with I burst from the Norman lines. The English an- 
his army, marched to Stamford Bridge upon , swered with their own battle-cry, " God's Rood! 
the river Derwent to give them instant battle. | Holy Rood!" The Normans then came sweep- 
He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, i ing down the hill to attack the English, 
marked out by their shining spears. Riding! There was one tall Norman Knight who rode 
round this circle at a distance, to survey it, he i before the Norman army on a prancing horse, 
saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue man- ; throwing up his heavy sword and catching it, 
tie and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly j and singing of the bravery of his countrymen. 



stumbled and threw him, 

" Who is that man who has fallen?" Harold 
asked of one of his captains. 

" The King of Norway," he replied. 

" He is a tall and stately king," said Harold, 
" but his end is near." 

He added, in a little while, "Go yonder to 



my brother, and tell him, if he withdraw his mass, cared no more for the showers of Norman 

troops he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and ! arrows than if they had been showers of Nor- 

rich and powerful in England." man rain. When the Norman horsemen rode 

The captain rode away and gave the message. ' against them, with their battle-axes they cut 

" What will he give to niy friend the King men and horses down. The Normans gave way. 



of Norway?" asked the brother. 

" Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the 
captain. 

"No more?" returned the brother with a 
smile. 

' ' The King of Norway being a tall man, per- 
haps a little more," replied the captain. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ENGLAND "UNDER WILLIAM THE FIRST, THE 
NORMAN CONQUEROR. 

Upon the ground where the brave Harold fell, 
William the Norman afterward founded an 
abbey, which under the name of Battle Abbey, 
was a rich and splendid place through many a 
troubled year, though now it is a gray ruin over- 
grown with ivy. But the first work he had to- 
do was to conquer the English thoroughly; and 
that, as you know by this time, was hard work 
for any man. 

He ravaged several counties; he burned and 
plundered many towns; he laid waste scores 
upon scores of miles of pieasant country ; he de- 
stroyed innumerable lives. At length Stigand, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, with other representa- 
tives of the clergy and the people, went to his 
camp, and submitted to him. Edgar, the insig- 
nificant son of Edmund Ironside, was pro- 
claimed King [by others, but nothing came of 
it. He fled to Scotland afterward, where his sis- 
ter, who was young and beautiful, married the 
Scottish King. Edgar himself was not impor- 
tant enough for anybody to care much about 
him. 

On Christmas-day William was crowned in. 
Westminster Abbey, under the title of William 
the First; but he is best known as William the 
Conqueror. It was a strange, coronation. One 
of the bishops who performed the ceremony 
asked the Normans, in French, if they would 
have Duke William for the;r king? They an- 
swered Yes. Another of the bishops put the 
same question to the Saxons, in English. They 
too answered Yes, with a loud shout. The 
noise, being heard by a guard of Norman horse- 
soldiers outside, was mistaken for resistance on 
the part of the English. The guard instantly 
set fire to the neighboring houses, and a tumult 
ensued; in the midst of which the King, being 
left alone in the Abbey, with a few priests (and 
they all being in a terrible fright together), was 
hurriedly crowned. When the crown was placed 
upon his head, he swore to govern the English 
as well as the best of their own monarchs. I 
dare say you think, as 1 do, that if we except 
the Great Alfred, he might pretty easily have 
done that. , 

Numbers of the English nobles had been 
„ killed in the last disastrous battle. Their es- 
among the Norman troops that Duke William ] tates, and the estates of all the nobles who had 
was lulled. Duke William took off his helmet, I fought against them there, King William seized 
in order that his face might be distinctly seen, j upon, and gave to his own Norman knights ana 
and rode along the line before his men. This nobles. Many great English families of the 
gave them courage. As they turned again to ! present time acquired their English lands in 
face the English, some of their Norman horse this way, and are very proud of it. 



An English Knight, who rode out from the En- 
glish force to meet him, fell by this Knight's 
hand. Another English Knight rode out, and 
he fell too. But then a third rode out, and 
killed the Norman. This was in the first begin- 
ning of the fight. It soon raged everywhere. 
The English, keeping side by side in a great 



The English pressed forward. A cry went forth 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



11 



But what is got by force must be maintained 
by force. These nobles ivere obliged to build 
castles all over England, to defend their new 
property; and, do what he would, the King 
could neither soothe nor quell .the nation as he 
wished. He gradually introduced the Norman 
language and the Norman customs; yet, for a 
long time, the great body of the English re- 
mained sullen and revengeful. On his going- 
over to Normandy, to visit his subjects there, 
the oppressions of his half-brother Odo, whom 
he left in charge of his English kingdom, drove 
the people mad. The men of Kent even invited 
over, to take possession of Dover, their old en- 
emy Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had led 
the fray when the Dover man was slain at his 
own fireside. The men of Hereford, aided by 
the Welsh, and commanded by a chief named 
Edric the Wild, drove the Normans out of their 
country. Some of those who had been dis- 
possessed of their lands banded together in the 
North of England; some, in Scotland; some, in 
the thick woods and marshes ; and whensoever 
they could fall upon the Normans, or upon the 
English who had submitted to the Normans, 
they fought, despoiled, and murdered, like the 
desperate outlaws that they were. Conspiracies 
were set on foot for a general massacre of the 
Normans, like the old massacre of the Danes. 
In short, the English were in a murderous mood 
all through the kingdom. 

King William, fearing he might lose his con- 
quest, came back, and tried to pacify the Lon- 
don people by soft words. He then set forth to 
repress the country-people by stern deeds. 
Among the towns which he besieged, and where 
he killed and maimed the inhabitants without 
any . distinction, sparing none, young or old, 
armed or unarmed, were Oxford, Warwick, 
Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Lincoln, York. 
In all these places, and in many others, fire and 
sword worked their utmost horrors, and made 
the laud dreadful to behold. The streams and 
rivers were discolored with blood; the sky was 
blackened with smoke; the fields were wastes of 
ashes; the waysides were heaped up with dead. 
Such are the fatal results of conquest and am- 
bition! Although William was a harsh and 
angry man, I do not suppose that he deliberately 
meant to work this shocking ruin when he in- 
vaded England. But what he had got by the 
strong hand, he could only keep by the strong 
hand, and in so doing he made England a great 
grave. 

Two sons of Harold, by name Edmund and 
Godwin, came over from Ireland, with some 
ships, against the. Normans, but were defeated. ( 
This was scarcely done, when the outlaws in 
the.woods so harassed York, that the Governor 
sent to the King for help. The King dispatched 
a general and a large force to occupy the town 
of Durham. The Bishop of that place met the 
general outside the town, and warned him not 
to enter, as he would be in danger there. The 
general cared nothing for the warning, and went 
in with all his men. That night, on every hill 
within sight of Durham, signul fires were seen 
to blaze. When the morning dawned, the En- 
glish, who had assembled in great strength, 
forced the gates, rushed into the town, and slew 
the Normans every one. The English afterward 
besought the Danes to come and help them. 
The Danes came, with two hundred and forty 
ships. The outlawed nobles joined them ; they 
captured York, and drove the Normans out of 
that city. Then, William bribed the Danes to 
go away ; and took such vengeance on the En- 
glish, that all the former fire and sword, smoke 
and ashes, death and ruin, were nothing com- 
pared with it. In melancholy songs and dole- 
ful stories, it was still sung and told by cottage 
fires on winter evenings, a hundred years after- 
ward, how, in those dreadful days of the Nor- 
man-;, there was not, from the River Dumber to 
the River Tyne, one inhabited village left, nor 
one cultivated field— how there was nothing but 
a dismal ruin, where the human creatures and the 
beasts lay dead together. 

The outlaws had, at this time, what they 
called a Camp of Refuge, in the midst of the 
fens of Cambridgeshire. Protected by those 
marshy grounds, which were difficult of ap- 
proach, they lay among the reeds and rushes, and 
were hidden by the mists that rose np from the 
watery earth. Now, there also was, at that 
time, over the sea in Flanders, an Englishman 
named Hereward, whose father had died in his 
absence, and whose property had been given to 
a Norman. When he heard of this wrong that 
had been done him (from such of the exiled En- 
glish as chanced to wander into that country), 
he longed for revenge: and, joining the outlaws 



I iu their (Simp of refuge, became their com- 
i mander. He was so good a soldier, that the 
i Normans supposed him to be aided by enchant- 
ment. William, even after he had made a road 
three miles in length across the Cambridgeshire 
marshes, on purpose to attack this supposed en- 
chanter, thought it necessary to engage an old 
lady, who pretended to be a sorceress, to come 
and do a Utile enchantment in the Royal cause. 
For tills purpose she was pushed on before the 
troops in a wooden tower; but Hereward very 
soon disposed of this unfortunate sorceress, by 
burning her, tower and all. The monks of the 
convent of Ely near at hand, however, who 
we're fond of good living, aud who found it. very, 
uncomfortable to have the country blockaded, 
and their supplies of meat and drink cut off, 
showed the King a secret way of surprising the 
camp. So Hereward was soon defeated. 
Whether he afterward died quietly, or whether 
he was killed after killing sixteen of the men 
'who attacked him (as some old rhymes relate 
that he did), I cannot say. nis defeat put an 
end to the Camp of Refuge; and, very soon 
af terward, the King, victorious both in Scotland 
and in England, quelled the last rebellious 
English noble. He then surrounded "fiimself 
with Norman lords, enriched by the property of 
English nobles; had a great survey made of all 
the land in England, which was entered as the 
property of its new owners, on a roll called 
Doomsdaj' Book; obliged the people to put out 
their fires aud candles at a certain hour every 
night, on the ringing of a bell which was called 
thejCurfew ; introduced the Norman dresses and 
manners; made the Normans masters every- 
where, and the English servants; turned out the 
English bishops, and put Normans in their 
places; and showed himself to be the Conqueror 
indeed. 

But, even with his own Normans, he had a 
restless life. They were always hungering and 
thirsting for the riches of the English'; and the 
more he gave, the more they wanted. His 
priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know 
of only one Norman who plainly told his mas- 
ter, the King, that he had come with him to 
England to dojhis duty as a faithful servant, and 
that property taken by force from other men had 
no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. 
We should not forget his name, for it is good to 
remember and, to honor honest men. 

Besides all these troubles, William the Con- 
queror was troubled by quarrels among his sons. 
He had three living. Robert, called Curthose, 
because of his shortiegs; William, called Rufus, 
or the Red, from the color of his hair; and 
Henry, fond of learning, and called, in the Nor- 
man .language, Beauclerc, • or Fine-Scholar. 
When Robert grew up, he asked of his father 
Oie government of Normandy, which he had 
nominally possessed, as a child, under his 
mother, Matilda. The King refusing to grant 
it, Robert became jealous and discontented; and 
happeuing one day. while in this temper, to be 
ridiculed by his brothers, who threw water on 
him from a balcony as he was walking before 
the door, he drew his sword, rushed up stairs, 
and was only prevented by the King himself 
from putting them to death. That same night 
he hotly departed with some followers from his 
father's court, and endeavored to take the 
Castle of Rouen by surprise. Failing in this, 
he shut himself up in another castle in Nor- 1 
maudy, which the King besieged, and where 
Robert one day unhorsed aud nearly killed him 
without knowing who he was. His submission 
when he discovered his father, and the interces- 
sion of the Queen and others, reconciled them ; 
but not soundly; for Robert soon strayed 
abrond, and went from court to court with his 
complaints. He wasagay, careless, thoughtless 
fellow, spending all he got on musicians and ' 
dancers; but his mother loved him, and often, 
against the King's command, supplied him with 
money through a messenger named Samson. At 
length the incensed King swore he would tear 
out Samson's eyes; and Sarnsou, thiuking that 
his only hope of safety was in becoming a 
monk, became one, went on such errands no 
more, and kept his eyes in his head. 

All this time, from the turbulent day of his 
strange coronation, the Conqueror had been 
struggling, you see, at any cost of cruelty and 
bloodshed, to maintain what he had seized. I 
All his reign, he struggled still, with the same 
object ever before him. He was a stern bold ! 
man, and he succeeded in it. 

He loved money, and was particular in his ; 
eating, but he had only leisure to indulge one 
other passion, and that was his love of hunting. 
He carried it to sucn a height, that he ordered 



whole villages and towns to be swept away to 
make forests for the deer. Not satisfied with 
sixty-eight Royal Forests, he laid waste an im- 
mense district, to form another in Hampshire, 
called the New Forest. The many thousands 
of miserable peasants who saw their little hovj i 3 
pulled down, and themselves and childri D 
turned into the open country without a shell- , 
detested him for his merciless addition to their 
many suffering's; and when, in the twenty-first 
year of his reign (which proved to be the last), ho 
went over to Rouen, England was as full of 
hatred against him as if every leaf on every tree 
in all his Royal Forests had been a curse upon 
his head. In the New Forest, his son Richard 
(for he had four sons) had been gored to death 
by a stag; and the people said that this so 
cruelly made Forest would yet he fatal to others 
of the Conqueror's race. 

He was engaged in a dispute with the King 
of France about some territory. While he 
stayed at Rouen, negotiating with that King, 
he kept his bed and took medicines: being ad- 
vised by his physicians to do so, on account of 
having grown to an unwieldy size. Word being- 
brought to him that the King of France made 
light of this, and joked about it, he swore in a 
great rage that he should rue his jests. He 
assembled his army, marched into the disputed 
territory, burnt — his old way! — the vines, the 
crops, and fruit, and set the town of Mantes on 
fire. But, in an evil hour; for, as he rode over 
the hot ruins, his horse, setting his hoofs upon 
some burning embers, started, threw him for- 
ward against the pommel of the saddle, aud 
gave him a mortal hurt. For six weeks ho lay 
dying in a monastery near Rouen, and then 
made his will, giving England to William, Nor- 
mandy to Robert, and five thousand pounds to 
Henry. And now, his violent deeds lay heavy 
on his mind. He ordered money to be given to 
many English churches and monasteries, and — 
which was much better repentance — released 
his prisoners of state, some of whom had been 
confined in his dungeons twenty years. 

It was a September morning, and the sun was 
rising, when the King was awakened from 
slumber by the sound of a church bell. " What 
bell is that?" he faintly asked. They told him 
it was the bell of tfce chapel of St. Mary. " I 
commend my soul," said he, " to Mary!" and 
died. 

Think of his name. The Conqueror, and then 
consider how he lay in death! The moment he 
was dead, his physicians,- priests, and no 
not knowing what contest for the throne might 
now take place, or what might happen in it, 
hastened away, each man for himself and his 
own property; the mercenary servants oi til 
court began to rob and plunder; the body of 
the King, in the indecent strife, was rolled i 
the bed, and lay alone, for hours, upon the 
ground. Oh, Conqueror, of whom so m 
great names are proud now, of whom so 1. 
great names thought nothing then, it were better 
to have conquered one true heart than England! 

By and by, the priests came creeping in 
prayers and candles; and a good knight. nam< -I 
Herluin, undertook (which no one else would 
do) to convey the body to Caen, iu Normandy, 
in order that it might be buried in St. Stephen's 
Church there, which the Conqueror had foul d 
ed. But fire, of which he had made such bad 
use in his life, seemed to follow him of itself in 
death. A great conflagration broke out in the 
town when the body was placed in the church; 
and those present running out to extinguish the 
flames, it was once again left alone. 

It was not even buried in peace. It was 
about to be let down, in its Royal robes, into .1 
tomb near the high altar, in presence of a great 
concourse of people, when a loud voice in the 
crowd cried out, " This ground is mine! I'] on 
it stood my father's house. This King de- 
spoiled me of both ground and house to build 
this church. In the great name of God, I here 
forbid his body to be covered with the" ear, '1 
that is my right!" The priests and bishops 
present, knowing the speaker's right, and know- 
ing that the King had often denied him justice, 
paid him down sixty shillings for the grave. 
Even then the corpse was not at rest. The 
tomb was too small, and they tried to force it 
in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the people 
hurried out into the air, and, for the third time, 
it was left alone. 

Where were the Conqueror's tiiree sons, that 
they were not at their father's burial? Robert 
was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and 
gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry waa 
carrying his five thousand pounds safely away 
in a convenient chest he had got made. Will- 



12 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



iam the Red was hurrying to England, to lay- 
hands upon the Royal treasure and the crown. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, 
CALLED RCFUS. 

William the Red, in breathless haste, 
secured the three great forts of Dover, Pevensey, 
and Hastings, and made with hot speed for 
Winchester, where the Royal treasure was kept. 
The treasurer delivering hirn the keys, he found 
thai it amounted to sixty thousand pounds in 
silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of 
this wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop 
of Canterbury to crown him, and became Will- 
iam the Second, King of England. 

Rufus was no sooner on the throne than he 
ordered into prison again the unhappy state cap- 
tives whom his father had set free, and directed 
a goldsmith to ornament his father's tomb pro- 
fusely with gold and silver. It would have been 
more dutiful in him to have attended the sick 
Conqueror when he was dying; but England 
itself, like this Red King, who once governed 
it, has sometimes made expensive tombs for 
dead men whom it treated shabbily when they 
were alive. 

The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, > 
seeming ciuite content to be only Duke of that 
country ; and the King's other brother, Fine- j 
Scholar, being quiet enough with his five thou- i 
sand pounds in a. chest; the King flattered him- 
self, we may suppose, with the hope of an easy 
reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in 
those days. The turbulent Bishop Odo (who 
had blessed the Norman army at the Battle of 
Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the 
credit of the victory to himself) soon began, in 
concert with some powerful Norman nobles, to 
trouble the Red King. i 

The truth seems to be that this bishop and his 
friends, who had lands in England and lands in | 
Normandy, wished to hold both under one 
sovereign; and greatly preferred a thoughtless 
good-natured person, such as Robert was, to 
Rufus; who, though far from being an amiable 
man in any respect, was keen, and not to be 
imposed upon. They declared in Robert's 
favor, and retired to their castles (those castles 
were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen 
humor. 'The Red King, seeing the Normans 
thus falling from him, revenged himself upon 
them by appealing to the English; to whom he 
made a variety of promises, which he never j 
meant to perform— in particular, promises to 
soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws ; and who, 
in return, so aided him with their valor, that 
Odo was besieged in the Castle of Rochester, and 
forced to abandon it, and to depart from Eng- 
land forever: whereupon the other rebellious 
Norman nobles were soon reduced and scattered. 
Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, 
where the people suffered greatly under the 
loose rule of Duke Robert. The King's object 
was to seize upon the Duke's dominions. This, 
the Duke, of course, prepared to resist; and 
miserable war between the two brothers seemed 
inevitable, when the powerful nobles on both 
sides, who had seen so much of war, interfered 
to prevent it. A treaty was made. Each of 
the two brothers agreed to give up something of 
his claims, and that the longer liver of the two 
should inherit all the dominions of the other. 
When they had come to this loving understand- 
ing', they embraced and joined their forces 
against Fine-Scholar; who had bought some 
territory of Robert with a part of his hve thou- 
sand pounds, and was considered a dangerous 
individual in consequence. 

St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy (there is 
another St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, won- 
derfully like it), was then, as it is now. a strong 
place perched upon the top of a high rock, 
around which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, 
leaving no road to the mainland. In this place 
Fine-Scholar shut himself up with his soldiers, 
and here he was closely besieged by his two 
brothers. At one time, when he was reduced to 
great distress for want of water, the generous 
Robert not only permitted his men to get water, 
but sent Fine-Scholar wine from his own table; 
and, on being remonstrated with by the Red 
Kinj,said, "What! shall we let our own brother 
die of thirst? Where shall we gef another, 
when he is gone?" At another time, the Red 
King riding alone on the shore of the bay, look- 
ing up at the castle, was taken by two of Fine- 
Scholar's men, one of whom was about to kill 
him, when he cried out, "Hold, knave; I am 
the King of Englandl" The story says that the 



soldier raised him from the ground respectfully duty of good Christians to drive away those nn- 
and humbly, and that the King took him into believers from the tomb of Our Saviour, and to 
his service. The story may or may not be true; take possession of it, and protect it. An excite- 
but, at any rate, it is true that Fine-Scholar ment such as the world had never known' before 
could not hold out against his united brothers, was created. Thousands and thousands of men 



and that he abandoned Mount St. Michael, and 
wandered about — as poor and forlorn as other 
scholars have been sometimes known to be. 

The Scotch became unquiet in the Red-King's 
time, and were twice defeated — the second time, 
with the loss of their King, Malcolm, and his 



of all ranks and conditions departed for Jerusa- 
lem to make war against the Turks. The war 
is called in history the first Crusade; and every 
Crusader wore a cross marked on his right 
shoulder. 
All the Crusaders were not zealous Christians. 



son. The Welsh became unquiet too. Against ' Among them were vast numbers of the restless, 
them Rufus was less successful; for they fought idle, profligate, and adventurous spirits of the 
among their native mountains, and did great time. Some became Crusaders for the love of 
execution on the King's troops. Robert of change; some, in the hope of plunder; some, 
Normandy became unquiet too; and, complain- j because they had nothing to do at home; some, 
ing that his brother the King did not faithfully j because they did what the priests told them ; 
perform his part of their agreement, took up some, because they liked to see foreign coun- 
arms, and obtained assistance from the King of tries; some, because they were fond of knock- 
France, whom Rufus, in the end, bought off : ing men about, and would as soon knock a Turk 
with vast sums of money. England became about as a Christian. Robert of Normandy may 
unquiet too. Lord Mowbray, the powerful Earl have been influenced by all these motives; and 
of Northumberland, headed a great conspiracy by a kind desire, besides, to save the Christian 



to depose the King, and to place upon the 
throne Stephen, the Conqueror's near relative. 
The plot was discovered; all the chief con- 
spirators*were seized; some were fined, some 
were put in prison, some were put to death. 
The Earl of Northumberland himself was shut 
up in a dungeon beneath Windsor Castle, where 
he died, an old man, thirty long years afterward. 
The Priests in England were more unquiet than 
any other class or power; for the Red King 
treated them with such small ceremony, that he 
refused to appoint new bishops or archbishops 
when the old ones died, but kept all the wealth 
belonging to those offices in his own hands. In 
return for this, the Priests wrote his life when 
he was dead, and abused him well. I am in- 
clined to think, myself, that there was little to 
choose between the Priesfs and the Red King; 
that both sides were greedy and designing; and 
that they were fairly matched. 

The Red King was false of heart, selfish, 
covetous, and mean. He had a worthy minister 
in his favorite, Ralph, nicknamed — for almost 
every famous person had a nickname in those 
rough days — Flambard, or the Firebrand. 
Once, the King being ill, became penitent, and 
made Anselm, a foreign priest and a good man, 
Archbishop of Canterbury. But he no sooner 
got well again than he repented of his repent- 
ance, and persisted in wrongfully keeping to 
himself some of the wealth belonging to the 
archbishopric. This led to violent disputes, 
which were aggravated by there being in Rome 
at that time two rival Popes; each of whom de- 
clared he was the only real original infallible 
Pope, who couldn't make a mistake, . At last, 
Anselm, knowing the Red King's character, and 
not feeling himself safe in England, asked leave' 
to return abroad. The Red King gladly gave 
it; for he knew that, as soon as Anselm was 
gone, he could begin to store up all the Canter- 
bury money again for his own use. 
< By such means, and by taxing and oppressing 
the English people in every possible way, the 
Red King became very rich. When he wanted 
money for any purpose, he raised it by some 
means or other, and cared nothing for the in- 
justice he did, or the misery he caused. Hav- 
ing the opportunity of buying from Robert the 
whole Duchy of Normandy for five years, he 
taxed the English people more than ever, and 
\ made the very convents sell their plate and val- 
uables to supply him with the means to make 
the purchase. But he was as quick and eager 
in putting down revolt as he was in raising- 
money; for, a part of the Norman people ob- 
jecting—very naturally, I think— to being sold 
I in this way, 'he headed an army against them 
with all the speed and energy of his father. He 
was so impatient, that he embarked for Nor- 
mandy in a great gale ofwind. And, when the 
sailors told him it was dangerous to go to sea in 
such angry weather, he replied, " Hoist sail and 



Pilgrims from bad treatment in future. He 
wanted to raise a number of armed men, and to 
go to the Crusade. He could not do so without 
money. He had no money; and he sold his 
dominions to his brother, the Red King, for five 
years. With the large sum he thus obtained, 
lie fitted out his Crusaders gallantly, and went 
away to Jerusalem in martial state. The Red 
King, who made money out of everything, 
stayed at home, busily squeezing more money 
out of Normans and English. 

After three years of great hardship and suffer- 
ing — from shipweck at sea; from travel in 
strange lands; from hunger, thirst, and fever, 
upon the burning sands of the desert; and from 
the fury of the Turks-r-the valiant Crusaders got 
possession of Our Saviour's tomb. The Turks 
were still resisting and fighting bravely, but this 
success increased the general desire in Europe 
to join the Crusade. Another great French Duke 
was proposing to sell his dominions for a term 
to the rich Red King, when the Red King's reign 
came to a sudden and violent end. 

You have not forgotten the New Forest which 
the Conqueror made, and which the miserable 
people whose homes he had laid waste so hated. 
The cruelty of the Forest Laws, and the torture 
and death they brought upon the peasantry, in- 
creased this hatred. The poor persecuted coun- 
try -people believed that the New Forest was en- 
chanted. They said that in thunder-storms, and 
on dark nights, demons appeared, moving be- 
neath the branches of the gloomy trees. They 
said that a terrible specter had foretold to Nor- 
man hunters that the Red King should be pun- 
ished there. And now, in the pleasant season 
of May, when the Red King had reigned almost 
thirteen years; and a second Prince of the Con- 
queror's blood--another Richard, the son of 
Duke Robert — was killed by an arrow in this 
dreaded Forest; the people said that the second 
time was noy,he last, and that there was another 
death to come. 

It was a lonely forest, accursed in the people's 
hearts for the wicked deeds that had been done to 
make it; and no man, save the King and his 
Courtiers and Huntsmen, liked to stray there. 
But, in reality, it was like any other forest. In 
the spring, the green leaves broke out of the 
buds; in the summer, flourished heartily, and 
made deep shades; in the winter, shriveled and 
blew down, and lay in brown heaps on the moss. 
Some trees were stately, and grew high and 
strong; some had fallen of themselves; some 
were felled by ttie forester's ax; some were hol- 
low, and the rabbits burrowed at their roots; 
some few were struck by lightning, and stood 
white and bare. There were hillsides covered 
with rich fern, on which the morning dew so 
beautifully sparkled ; there were brooks, where 
the deer went down to drink, or over which the 
whole herd bounded, flying from the arrows of 
the huntsmen; there were sunny glades, and sol- 



Did vou ever hear of a kinu who was I eran places where but little light came through 
drowned?' the rustling leaves. The songs of the birds m 

You will wonder how it was that even the I the New Forest were pleasanterto hear than the 
careless Robert came to sell his dominions. It | shouts of fighting-men outside, and even when 
happened thus. It had long been the custom the Red King and his Court came hunting 
for many English people to"make journeys to through its solitudes, cursing loud and riding 
Jerusalem, which were called Pilgrimages, in hard, with a jingling of stirrups and bridles and 
order that they might pray beside the tomb of knives and daggers, they did much less harm 
Our Saviour there. Jerusalem belonging to the there than among the English and Normans, and 
Turks, and the Turks hating Christianity, these the stags died (as they lived) tar easier than the 
Christian travelers were often insulted and ill people. 



used. The Pilgrims bore it patiently for some 
time, but at length a remarkable man, of great 
earnestness and eloquence, called Peter the 
Hermit, began to preach in various places 



Upon a day in August, the Red King, now 
reconciled to 'his brother, Fine- Scholar, came 
with a great train to hunt in the New Forest. 
Fine-Scholar was of the party. They were a 



XiCILUJl, Lilian uu |Ji i.£ii.u m vtiiiwuo jy.i^^^u * .— ~ ~ --- - _ * .,, - „„,J 

against the Turks, and to declare that it was the merry party, and had lam all night at Malwood 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



13 



Keep a bunting-lodge in the Forest, where they : 
had made good cheer, both at supper aud break- j 
fast, aud had drunk a deal of wine. The party 
dispersed in various directions, as the custom of 
hunters then was. The King took with him 
only Sir Walter Tyrrel, who was a famous 
sportsman, and to whom he had given, before 
they mounted horse that morning, two hne 
arrows. ,. 

The last time the King was ever seen alive, 
he was riding with Sir Walter Tyrrel, and their 
dogs were hunting together. 

It was almost night, when a poor charcoal- 
burner, passing through the Forest with his cart, 
came upon the solitary body of a dead mau, shot 
with an arrow in the breast, and still bleeding. 
He got it into his cart. It was the body of the 
Kin" Shaken and tumbled, with its red beard 
all whitened with lime and clotted with blood, 
it was driven in the cart by the charcoal-burner 
next day to Winchester Cathedral, where it was 
received and buried. 

Sir Walter Tyrrel, who escaped to Normandy, 
and claimed the protection of the King of France, 
swore in France that the Red King was suddenly 
shot dead by an arrow from an unseen hand, 
while they were hunting together; that he was 
fearful of being suspected as the King's mur- 
derer; and that he instantly set spurs to his horse, 
and fled to the seashore. Others declared that 
the King and Sir Walter Tyrrel were hunting 
in company, a little before sunsel, standing in 
bushes opposite one another, when a stag came 
between them. The King drew his bow. and 
* took aim, but the string broke. That the King 
then cried, " Shoot, Walter, in the Devil's 
name!" That Sir Walter shot. That the 
arrow glanced against a tree, was turned aside 
from the stag, and struck the King from his 
horse dead. 

By whose hand the Red King really fell, and 
whether that hand dispatched the arrow to his 
breast by accident or by design, is only known 
to God. Some think his brother may have 
caused him to be killed ; but the Red King had 
made so many enemies, both among priests and 
people, that suspicion may reasonably rest upon 
a less unnatural murderer. Men know no more 
than that he was found dead in the New Forest, 
which the suffering people had regarded as a 
doomed ground for his race. 



CHAPTER X. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED 
FINE-SCHOLAR. 

Fine Scholar, on hearing of the Red King's 
death, hurried to Winchester with as much speed 
as Rufus himself had made, to seize the Royal 
treasure. But the keeper of the treasure,»who had 
been one of the hunting party in the Forest, 
made haste to Winchester too, and arriving 
there about the same time, refused to yield it up. 
Upon this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and 
threatened to kill the treasurer ; who might have 
paid for his fidelity with his life, but that he 
knew longer resistance to Jje. useless when he 
found the Prince supported by a company of 
powerful barons, who declared they were deter- 
mined to make him King. The treasurer there- 
fore, gave up the money and jewels of the 
Crown: and on the third day after the death of 
the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar 
stood before the high altar in Westminster 
Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he 
would resign the Church property which his 
brother had seized; that he would do no wrong 
to the nobles; and that he would restore to the 
people the laws of Edward the Confessor, with 
all the improvements of William the Conqueror. 
So began the reign of King Henry the First. 

The people were attached to their new King, 
both because he had known distress, and because 
he was an Englishman by birth, and not a Nor- 
man, To strengthen this last hold upon them, 
the King wished to marry an English lady; and 
could think of no other wife than Maud the 
Good, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Al- 
though the good Princess did not love the King, 
she was so affected by the representations the 
nobles made to her of the great charity it would 
be in her to unite, the Norman and Saxon races, 
and prevent hatred and bloodshed between them 
for tSie future, that she consented to become his 
wife. After some disputing among the priests, 
who said that as she had been in a convent in 
her youth, and had worn the veil of a nun she 
could not be lawfully married— against which 
the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom 
she had lived in her youth, had indeed some- 



times thrown a piece of black stuff over her, 
but for no other reason than because the nun's 
veil was the only dress the conquering Normans 
respected in girl or woman, and. not because she 
had taken the vows of a nun, which she never had 
— she was declared free to marry, and was made 
King Henry's Queen. A good Queen she was; 
beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of abetter 
husband than the King. 

For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, 
though firm aud clever'. He cared very little for j 
his word, and look any means to gain his ends. 1 
All this is shown in his treatment of his brother 
Robert— Robert, who had suffered him to be re- 
freshed with water, and who had sent him the 
wine from his own table, when he was shut up, 
with the crows flving below him, parched with 
thirst, in the castle on the top of St. Michael's 
Mount, where his Red brother would have left 
him die. 

Before the King began to deal with Robert, 
he removed and disgraced all the favorites of 
the late King; who were, for the most part, base 
characters, much detested by the people. Flam- 
bard, or Firebrand, whom the late King had 
made Bishop of Durham, of all things in tly; 
world, Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but 
Firebrand was a great joker aud a jolly com- 
panion, aud made himself so popular with his 
guards, that they pretended to know nothing 
about a long rope that was sent into his prison 
at the bottom of a deep flagon of wiue. The 
guards took the wine, and Firebrand took the 
rope; with which, when they were fast asleep, 
he let himself down from a window in the night, 
and so got cleverly aboard ship, and away to 
Normaudy. 

Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar 
came to the throne, was still absent in the Holy 
Land. Henry pretended that Robert had been 
made Sovereign of that country; and he had 
been away so long, that the ignorant people be- 
lieved it. But, behold, when Henry had been 
some time King of England, Robert came home 
to Normandy; having leisurely returned from 
Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful 
country he had enjoyed himself very much, and 
had married a lady as beautiful as itself! In 
Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge 
him to assert his claim to the English crown, 
and declare tvar against King Henry. This, 
after great loss of time in feasting and dancing 
with his beautiful Italian wife among his Nor- 
man friends, he at last did. 

The English, in general, were on King Henry's 
side, though many of the Normans were on 
Robert's But the English sailors deserted the 
King, and took a great part of the English fleet 
over to Normandy; so that Robert came to in- 
vade this country in no foreign vessels, but in 
English ships. The virtuous Ansel m, however, 
whom Henry had invited back from abroad, and 
made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast 
in the King's cause ; and it was so well supported 
that the two armies, instead of righting, made a 
peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and 
everybody, readily trusted his brother the King; 
and . agreed to go home and receive a pension 
from England, on condition that all his follow- 
ers were fully pardoned. This the King very 
faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner 
gone than he began to punish them. 

Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, 

who, on being summoned by the King to answer 

to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to one 

of his strong castles, shut himself up therein, 

called around him his tenants and vassals, and 

fought for his liberty, but was defeated and 

banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true 

to his word, that when he first heard of this 

nobleman having risen against his brother, be 

laid waste the Earl of Shrewsbury's estates in 

Normandy, to show the King that he would 

} favor no breach of their treaty. Finding, on 

better information, afterward, that the Earl's 

! only crime was having been his friend, he came 

' over to England, in his old thoughtless warrn- 

' hearted way, to intercede with the King, and 

1 remind him of the solemn promise to pardon all 

his followers. 

This confidence might have put the false King 
to the blush, but it did not. Pretending to be 
I very friendly, he so surrounded his brother with 
spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in 
his power, had nothing for it but to renounce 
his pension, and escape while he could. Getting 
home to Normandy, and understanding the King 
better now, he naturally allied himself with his 
old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still 
thirty castles in that country. This was exactly 
what Henry wanted. He immediately declared 



that Robert had broken the treaty, and next year 
invaded Normandy. 

He pretended that he came to deliver the Nor- 
mans, at their own request, from his brother's 
misrule. There is reason to fear that his misrule 
was bad enough; for his beautiful wife had died, 
leaving him with an infant sou, and his court 
was again so careless, dissipated, and ill regu- 
lated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed 
of a day for want of clothes to put on— his at- 
tendants having stolen all his dresses. But he 
headed his army like a brave prince and a gal- 
lant soldier, though he had the misfortune to be 
taken prisoner by King Henry, with four hun- 
dred of his Knights. Among them was poor 
harmless Edgar Aiheliug, who loved Robert 
well. Edgar was not important enough to be 
severe with. The King afterward gave him a 
small pension, which he lived upon and died 
upon, in peace among the quiet woods and fields 
of England. 

And Robert— poor, kind, generous, wasteful, 
heedless Robert, with so mauy faults, and yet 
with virtues that might have made a better and 
a happier man — what was the end of him? If 
the King had had the magnanimity to say with a 
kind air, " Brother, tell me, before these noble- 
men, that from this time you will be my faith- 
ful follower and friend, and never raise your 
hand against me or my forces more!" he might 
have trusted Robert to the death. But the King- 
was not a magnanimous man. He sentenced 
his brother to be confined for life in one oi the 
| Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprison- 
: me'ut, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but 
he one day broke away from his guard, anil gal- 
j loped off. He had the evil fortune to ride into 
1 a swamp, where his horse stuck fast, aud he 
I was taken. When the King heard of it he 
' ordered him to be blinded, which was done by 
putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes. 

AndTso, in darkness and in prison, many years, 
he thought of all his past lite, of the time he had 
wasted, of the treasure he had squandered, of 
the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he 
had thrown away, of the talents he had neg- 
lected. Sometimes, on fine autumn mornings, 
he would sit and think of the old hunting par- 
ties in the free forest, where he had been the f ore- 
' most and the gayest. Sometimes, in the still 
nights, he would wake, and mourn for the many 
nights that had stolen past him at the gaming- 
table; sometimes, would Beem to hear, upon the 
melancholy wind, the old songs of the minstrels; 
sometimes would dream, in his blindness, of the 
light and glitter of the Norman court. Many and 
many a time, he groped back, in his fancy, to 
Jerusalem, where he had fought so well ; or at 
the head of his brave companions, bowed his 
feathered helmet to the shot ts of welcome greet- 
ing him in Italy, and seemed again to walk 
among the sunny vinej'ards, or on the shore of 
the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And then, 
thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless boy, 
he would stretch out his solitary arms and weep. 
At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, 
with cruel aud disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, 
bandaged from his jailer's sight, but on which 
the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn old 
man of eighty. He had once been Robert of 
Normandy. Pity him! 

At the time when Robert of Normandy was 
I taken prisoner by his brother, Robert's little son 
was only five years old. This child was taken 
too. and' carried before the King, sobbing and 
crying; for, young as he was, he knew he had 
good reason to be afraid of his Royal uncle. 
The King was not much accustomed to pity 
those who were, in his power, but his cold heart 
seemed for the moment to soften toward the 
j boy. He was observed to make a great effort 
: as if to prevent himself from being cruel, and 
ordered the child to be taken away; whereupon 
a certain Baron, who had married a daughter of 
Duke Robert (by name, Helie of St. Saen).'took 
j charge of him tenderly. The King's gentleness 
j did not last long. Be'fore two years were aver, 
he sent messengers to this lord's castle to seize 
the child and bring him away. The Baron was 
not there at the time, but his servants were faith- 
ful, and carried the boy off in his sleep and hid 
him. When the Baron came home, and was told 
what the King had done.he took the child abroad, 
and. leading him by the hand, went from King 
to King, and from "court to court, relating how 
the child had a claim to the throne of England, 
and how his uncle the King, knowing that he 
had that claim, would have murdered him, per- 
haps, but for his escape. 

The youth and innocence of the pretty little 
William Fitz-Robert (for that was his name) 
made him many friends at that time. When he 



14 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



became a young man, the King of France, unit- 
ing wiih the French Counts of An jou and Flan- 
ders, supported his cause against the King of 
England, and took many of the King's towns 
and castles in Normandy. But King Henry, 
artful and cunning always, bribed some of 
William's friends with money, some with 
promises, some with power. He bought off the 
Count of Anjou, by promising to marry his eld- 
est son, also named William, to the Count's 
daughter; and, indeed, the whole trust of this 
King's life was in such bargains, and he 
believed (as many another king has done since, 
and as one king did in France a very little time 
ago) that every man's truth and honor can be 
bought at some price. For all this, he was so 
afraid of William Filz-Bobert and his friends, 
that, for a long time, he believed his life to be 
in danger; and never lay down to sleep, even in 
his palace surrounded by his guards, without 
having a sword and buckler at his bedside. 

To strengthen his power, the King with great 
ceremony betrothed his eldest daughter Matilda, 
then a child only eight years old, to l>e the wife 
of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. 
To raise' her marriage portion, lie taxed the En- 
glish people in a most oppressive manner; then 
treated them to a great procession, to. restore 
their good humor; and sent Matilda away, in 
fine state, with the German embassadors, to be 
educated in the country of her future husband. 

And now his Queen, Maud the Good, un- 
happily died. It was a sad thought for that 
gentle lady, that the only hope with which she 
had married a man wh&m she had never loved 
— the hope of reconciling the Norman and En- 
glish races— had failed. At the very time of her 
death, Normandy and all France was in arms 
against England ; for, so soon as his last danger 
was over, King Henry had been false to all the 
French powers he had promised, bribed, and 
bought, and they had naturally united against 
him. After some fighting, however, in which 
few suffered but the unhappy common people 
(who always suffered, whatsoever was the mat- 
ter), he began to promise, bribe, and buy again ; 
and by those means, and by the help of the 
Pope, who exerted himself to save more blood- 
shed, and by solemnly declaring, over and over 
again, that he really was in earnest this time, 
and would keep his word, the King made peace. 
One of the first consequences of this peace was, 
that the King went over to Normandy with his 
son Prince William and a great retinue, to have 
the Prince acknowledged as his successor by the 
Norman Nobles, and to contract the promised 
marriage (this was one of the many promises the 
King had broken) between him and the daugh- 
ter of the Count of Anjou. Both these things 
were triumphantly done, with great show and 
rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November, 
in the year one thousand one hundred and 
twenty, the whole retinue prepared to embark 
at the' Port of Barfleur for the voyage home. 

On that day, and at that place, there came to 
the King, Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said: 

" My liege, my father served your father all his 
life upon the sea He steered the ship with the 
golden boy upon the prow, in which your father 
sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to 
grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel 
in the harbor here, called The White Ship, 
manned by fifty sailors of renown. 1 pray you, 
Sire, to let your servant have the honor of steer- 
ing you in The White Ship to England!" 

" lam sorry, friend," replied the King, 
" that my vessel is already chosen, and that I 
cannot therefore sail with the sou of the man 
who served my father. But the Prince and all 
his company shall go along wifli you in the fair 
White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of re- 
nown.!' 

An hour or two afterward, tbe King set sail 
in the vessel he had chosen, accompanied by 
other vessels, and, sailing all night with a fair 
and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of Eng- 
land in the morning. While it was yet night, 
the people in some of those shins heard a faint 
wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what 
it was. 

Now the Prince was a dissolute, debauched 
young man of eighteen, who bore no love to the 
English, and had declared that when he came 
to the throne he would yoke them to the plow 
like oxen. He went aboard The White Ship, 
with one hundred and forty youthful Nobles 
like himself, among whom were eighteen noble 
ladies of the highest rank. All this gay com- 
pany, with their servants and the fifty sailors, 
made three hundred souls aboard the fair White 
Ship. 

"Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," 



said the Prince, " to the fifty sailors of renown! 
My father the King has sailed out of the harbor. 
W hal time is there to make merry here, and yet 
reach England with the rest?" 

" Prince," said Fitz-Stephen, " before morn- 
ing, my fifty and The White Ship shall over- 
take the swiftest vessel in attendance on your 
father the King, if we sail at midnight!" 

Then, the Prince commanded to make merry ; 
and the sailors drank out the three casks of 
wine; and the Prince and all the noble com- 
pany danced in the moonlight on the deck of 
The White Ship. 

When, at last, she shot out of the harbor of 
Barfleur, there was not a sober seaman on board. 
But the sails were all set, and the oars all going 
merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay 
young nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped 
in mantles of various bright colors to protect 
them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. 
The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row 
harder yet, for the honor of The White Ship. 

Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hun- 
dred hearts. It was the cry the people in the 
distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the 
water. The White Ship had'struck upon a rock 
—was filling — going down! 

Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, 
with some few Nobles. "Push off, " he whis- 
pered; " and row to the land. It is not far, 
and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must 
die." 

But, as they rowed away fast from the sink- 
ing ship, the Prince heard the voice of his sister 
Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling for help. 
He never in his life had been so good as he was 
then. He erred in an agony, ' ' Row back at any 
risk! I cannot bear to leave her!" 

They rowed back. As the .Prince held out 
his arms to catch his sister, such numbers 
leaped in, that the boat was overset. And, in 
the same instant, The White Ship went down. 

Only two men floated. They both clung to 
| the main-yard of the ship, which had broken 
from the mast, and now supported them. One 
asked the other who he was? He said, " I am 
a nobleman, Godrey by name, the son of Gil- 
bert de 1'A.igie. And you?" said he. "1 am 
Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the an- 
swer. Then they said together, "Lord be 
merciful to us both!" and tried to encourage 
one another, as they drifted in the cold benumb- 
ing sea on that unfortunate November night. 

By and by, another man came swimming 
toward them, whom they knew, when he 
pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz- 
Stephen. "Where is the Prince?" said he./ 
"Gone!. Gone!" the two cried together. 
" Neither he, nor his brolher, nor his sister, nor 
the King's niece, nor her brother, nor any one 
of all the brave three hundred, noble or com- 
moner, except we three, has risen above the 
water!" Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, 
cried, "Woe! woe to me!" and sunk to the bot- 
tom. 

The other two clung to the yard for some 
hours. At length the young noble said faintly, 
" I am exhausted and chilled with the cold, and 
can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! 
God preserve you!" So, he dropped and sunk; 
and, of all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher 
of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, 
some fishermen saw him floating in his sheep- 
skin coat, and got him into their boat — the sole 
relater of the dismal tale. 

For three days no one dared to carry the in- 
telligence to the King. At length, they sent 
intohis presence a little boy, who, weeping bit- 
terly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The 
White Ship was lost, with all on board. The 
King fell to the ground like a dead man, and 
never, never afterward was seen to smile. 

But he plotted again, and promised again, 
and bribed and bought again, in his old deceit- 
ful way. Having no son to succeed him, after 
all his pains (" The Prince will never yoke us to 
the plow now!" said the English people), he 
took a second wife — Adelais or Alice, a duke's 
daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no 
more children, however, he proposed to the 
Barons to swear that they would recognize as 
his successor his daughter Matilda, whom, as 
she was now a widow, he married to the eldest 
son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed 
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing 
[ a sprig of flowering broom (called Genet in 
: French) in his cap for a feather. As one false 
1 man usually makes many, and as a false King, 
I in particular, is pretty certain to make a false 
I court, the Barons took the oath about the 
I succession of Matilda (and her children after 
her), twice over, without in the least intending 



to keep it. The Kins wae now relieved from 
any remaining fears of William B itz-Robert, by 
his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, in 
France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike- wound 
in the hand. And, as Matilda gave birth to 
three sons, he thought the succession to the 
throne secure. 

He spent most of the latter part of his life, 
which was troubled by family quarrels, in Nor- 
mandy, to be near Matilda. When he had 
reigned upward of thirty - five years, and was 
sixty-seven years old, he died of an indigestion 
and fever, brought on by eating, when he was 
far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against 
which he had often been cautioned by his phy- 
sicians. His remains were brought over to 
Reading Abbey to be buried. 

You may perhaps hear the cunning and 
promise-breaking of King Henry the First called 
" policy " by some people, and "diplomacy" 
by others. Neither of these fine words will in 
the least mean that it was true ; and nothing 
that is not true can possibly be good. 

His greatest merit, that I know of, was his 
love of learning. I should have given him 
greater credit even for that, if it had been 
strong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of 
a certain poet he once took prisoner, who was a 
knight besides. But he ordered the poet's eyes 
to be lorn from his head, because he had 
laughed at him in his verses; and the poet, in 
the pain of that torture, dashed out his own 
brains against his prison wall. King Henry the 
First was avaricious, revengeful, and so false, 
that I suppose a man never lived whose wordf 
was less to be relied upon. 



CHAPTER XI. 

ENGLAND TINDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN. 

The King was no sooner dead than all the 
plans and schemes he had labored at so long, 
and lied so much for, crumbled away like a 
hollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had 
never mistrusted or suspected, started up to 
claim the throne. 

Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's 
daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To 
Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late 
King had beenliberal; making Henry Bishop of 
Winchester, and finding a good marriage for 
Stephen, and much enriching him. This did 
not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a 
false witness, a servant of the late King, to . 
swear that the King had named him for his heir 
upon his death-bed. On this evidence the 
Archbishop of Canterbury crowned him. The 
new King, so suddenly made, lost not a mo- 
ment i,n seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring 
foreign soldiers with some of it to protect his 
throne. 

If the dead King had even done as the false 
witness said, he would have had small right to 
will away the English people, like so many 
sheep or oxen, without their consent. But he 
had, in fact, bequeathed all his territory to 
Matilda; who, supported by Robert, Earl of 
Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. 
Some of the powerful barons and priests took 
her side; some took Stephen's; all fortified their 
castles; and again the miserable English people 
were involved in war, from which they could 
never derive advantage whosoever was victori- 
ous, and in which all parlies plundered, tort- 
ured, starved, and ruined them. 

Five years had passed since the death of Henry 
the First — and during those five years there had 
been two terrible invasions by the people of 
Scotland under their King, David, who was at 
last defeated with all his army — when Matilda, 
attended by her brother Robert and a large force, 
appeared in England to maintain her claim. A 
battle was fought between her troops and King 
Stephen's at Lincoln; ;n which the King him- 
self was taken prisoner, after bravely fighting 
until his battle-ax and sword were broken, and 
was carried into strict confinement at Glouces- 
ter. Matilda then submitted herself to the 
Priests, and the Priests crowned her Queen of 
England. 

She did not long enjoy this dignity. The 
people of London had a great affection for 
Stephen; many of the Barons considered it de- 
grading to be ruled by a woman; and the 
Queen's temper was so haughty that she made 
innumerable enemies. The people of London 
revolted; and, in alliance with the troops of 
Stephen, besieged her at Winchester, where they 
took her brother Robert prisoner, whom, as her 
best soldier and chief general, she was glad to 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAKD. 



15 



exchange for Stephen himself, 'who thus re- 
gained his liberty. Then, the long war went on 
afresh. Once, she was pressed so hard in the 
Castle of Oxford, iu the winter weather when 
the snow lay thick upon the ground, that her 
only chance of escape was to dress herself all in 
white, and, accompanied by no more than three 
faithful Knights, dressed in like manner that 
their figures might not be seen from Stephen's 
camp as they passed over the snow, to steal 
away on foot, across the frozen Thames, walk a 
long distance, and at last gallop away on horse- 
back All this she did, but to no great purpose 
then; for her brother dying while the struggle 
was yet going on, she at last withdrew to Nor- 
mandy. . . , . , 

In two or three years after her withdrawal her 
cause appeared in England afresh, in the person 
of her son Henry, young Plantagenet, who. at 
only eighteen years of age, was very powerful, 
not only on account of his mother having re- 
signed all Normandy to him, but also from his 
having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of 
the French King, a bad woman, who had great 
possessions in France. Louis, the French King, 
not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, 
King Stephen's son, to invade Normandy: but 
Henry drove their united forces out of that 
country, and then returned here to assist his 
partisans, whom the King was then besieging at 
Wallingford upon the Thames. Here, for two 
days, divided only by the river, the two armies 
lay encamped opposite to one another — on the 
eve, as it seemed to all men, of another desperate 
fight, when the Earl of Arundel took heart and 
said, " that it was not reasonable to prolong the 
unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to minis- 
ter to the ambition of two princes." - 

Many other noblemen repeating and support- 
ing this when it was once uttered, Stephen and 
young Plantagenet went down, each to his own 
bank of the river, and held a conversation across 
it, in which they arranged a truce; very much 
to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, who swaggered 
away with some followers, and laid violent 
hands, on the. Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury, 
where he presently died mad. The truce led to 
a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was 
agreed that Stephen should retain the crown, on 
condition of his declaring Henry his successor; 
that William, another son of the King's, should 
inherit his father's rightful possessions ; and that 
all the Crown lands which Stephen had given 
away should be recalled, and all the castles he 
had permitted to be built demolished. Thus 
terminated the bitter war, which had now lasted 
fifteen years, and had again laid England waste. 
In the next year Stephen died, after a troubled 
reign of nineteen years. 

Although King Stephen was, for the time in 
which he lived, a humane and moderate man, 
with many excellent qualities; and although 
nothing worse is known of him than his usurpa- 
tion of the Crown, which he probably excused 
to himself by the consideration that King Henry 
the First was a usurper too — which was no ex- 
cuse at all ; the people of England suffered more 
in these dread nineteen years than at any former 
period even of their suffering history. In the 
division of the nobility between the two rival 
claimants of the Crown, and in the growth of 
what is called the Feudal System (which made 
the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of 
the Barons), every Noble had his strong Castle, 
where he reigned the cruel king of all the neigh- 
boring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated 
whatever cruelties he chose. And never were 
worse cruelties committed upon earth than in 
wretched England in those nineteen years. 

The writers who were living then describe 
them fearfully. They say that the castles were 
filled with devils rather than with men ; that the 
peasants, men and women, were put into dun- 
geons for their gold and silver, were tortured 
with fire and smoke, were hung up by the 
thumbs, were hung up by the heels with'great 
weights to their heads, were torn with jagged 
irons, killed with hunger, broken to death in nar- 
tow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, mur- 
dered in countless fiendish ways. In England 
there was no corn, no meat, no cheese, no but- 
ter ; there were no tilled lands, no harvests. Ashes 
of burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all that 
the traveler, fearful of the robbers who prowled 
abroad at all hours, would see in a long day's 
journey; and, from sunrise until night, he 
would not come upon a home. 

The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily 
too, from pillage, but many of them had castles 
of their own, and fought in helmet and armor 
like the barons, and drew lots with other 
fighting men for their share of booty. The 



Pope (or Bishop of Borne), on King Stephen's 
resisting his ambition, laid England under an 
Interdict at one period of this reign; which 
means that he allowed no service to be performed 
in the churches, no couples to be married, no 
bells to be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. 
Any man having the power to refuse these 
things, no matter whether he were called a Pope 
or a Poulterer, would, of course have the power 
of afflicting numbers of innocent people. That 
nothing might be wanting to the miseries of 
King Stephen's time, the'Pope threw in this 
contribution to the public store — not very like 
the widow's contribution, a? I think, when Our 
Saviour sat in Jerusalem over against the Treas- 
ury, " and she threw in two mites, which make 
a farthing." 



CHAPTER XII. 

england under henry the second. 

Part the First. 

Henrt Plantagenet, when he was but 
twenty-one years old, quietly succeeded to the 
throne of England, according to his agreeement 
made with the late King at Winchester. Six 
weeks after Stephen's death, he and his QueeD, 
Eleanor, were crowned in that city; into which 
they rode on horseback in great state, side by 
side, amidst much shouting and rejoicing, and 
clashing of music, and strewing of flowers. 

The reign of King Henry the Secoud began 
well. The King had great possessions, and 
(what with his own rights, and what with 
those of his wife) was lord of one third part of 
France. He was a young man of vigor, ability, 
and resolution, and immediately applied him- 
self to remove some of the evils which hed 
arisen in the last unhappy regin. He revoked 
all the grants of land that had been hastily 
made, on either side, during the late struggles; 
he obliged numbers of disorderly soldiers to 
depart from England; he reclaimed all the 
castles belonging "to the Crown ; and he forced 
the wicked nobles to pull down their own 
castles, to the number of eleven hundred, in 
which such dismal cruelities had been inflicted 
on the people. The King's brother, Geoffrey, 
rose against him in France, while he was so 
well employed, and rendered it necessary for 
him to repair to that country; where, after he 
hail subdued and made a friendly arrangement 
with his brother (who did not live long), his 
ambition to increase his possessions involved 
him in a war with the French King, Louis, with 
whom he had been on such friendly terms just 
before, that to the French King's infant daugh- 
ter, then a baby in the cradle, he had promised 
one of his little sons in marriage, who was a 
child of five years old. However, the war came 
to nothing at last, and the Pope made the two 
Kings friends again. 

Now, the clergy, in the troubles of the last 
reign, had gone on very ill indeed. There were 
all kinds of criminals among them — murderers, 
thieves, and vagabonds; and the worst of the 
matter was, that the good priests would not 
give up the bad priests to justice when they 
committed crimes, but persisted in sheltering 
and defending them. The King, well knowing 
that there could be no peace or rest in England 
while such things lasted, resolved to reduce the 
power of the clergy; and, when he had reigned 
seven years, found (as he considered) a good 
opportunity for doing so, in the death of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury. " I will have for 
the new Archbishop." thought the King, "a 
friend in whom I can trust, who will help me to 
humble these rebellious priests, and to have 
them dealt with, when they do wrong, as other 
men who do wrong are dealt with." So he re- 
solved to make his favorite the new Archbishop ; 
and this favorite was so extraordinary a man. 
and his story is so curious, that I must tell you 
all about him. 

Once upon a time, a worthy merchant of Lon- 
don, named Gilbert it Becket made a pilgrim- 
age to the Holy Land, and was taken prisoner 
by a Saracen lord This lord, who treated him 
kindly and not like a slave, had one fair daugh- 
ter, who fell in love with the merchant; and 
who told him I hat she wanted to become a 
Christian, and was willing to marry him if they 
could fly to a Christian country. The mer- 
chant returned her love, until he found an op- 
portunity to escape, when he did not trouble 
himself about the Saracen lady, but escaped 
with his servant Richard, who had been taken 
prisoner along with him, and anived in Eng- 
land and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who 



was more loving than the merchant, left her 
father's house in disguise to follow him, and 
made her way, under many hardships, to the 
seashore. The merchant had taught her onl3 r 
two English words (for I suppose he must have 
learnt the Saracen tongue himself, and made 
love in that language), of which Loudon was 
one, and his own name, Gilbert, the other. She 
went among the ships, saying, " London! Lon- 
don!" over and over again, until the sailors un- 
derstood that she wanted to find an English ves- 
sel that would carry her there; so they showed 
her such a ship, and she paid for her passage 
with some of her jewels, and sailed away. 
Well! The merchant was sitting in his count- 
ing-house in London one day, when he heard a 
great noise in the street; and presently Richard 
came running in from the warehouse, with his 
eyes wide open and his breath almost gone, say- 
ing, " Master, master, here is the Saracen 
lady!" The merchant, thought Richard was 
mad; but Richard said, "No, master! As I 
live, the Saracen lady is going up and down the 
City, calling Gilbert! Gilbert!" Then, he took 
the merchant by the sleeve, and pointed out at 
window; and there they saw her among the 
gables and water-spouts of the dark and dirty 
street, in her foreign dress, so forlorn, sur- 
rounded by a wondering crowd, and passing 
slowly along, calling Gilbert, Gilbert! When 
the merchant saw her, and thought of the ten- 
derness she had shown him in bis captivity, and 
of her constancy, his heart was moved, and be 
ran down into the street; and she saw him 
coming, and with a great cry fainted in his 
arms. They were married without loss of 
time, and Richard (who was an excellent man) 
danced with joy the whole day of the wedding; 
and they all lived happy ever afterward. 

This merchant and this Saracen lady had one 
son, Thomas a Becket. He it was who be- 
came the favorite of King Henry the Second. 

He had become Chancellor, when the King 
thought of making him Archbishop. He was 
clever, gay, well educated, brave; had fought 
in several battles in France; had defeated a 
French knight in single combat, and brought 
his horse away as a token of the victory. He 
lived in a noble palace, he was the tutor of the 
young Prince Henry, he was served by one 
hundred and forty knights, his riches were im- 
mense. The King once sent him as his em- 
bassador to France; and the French people, be- 
holding in what state he traveled, cried out in 
the streets, " How splendid must the King of 
England be, when this is only the Chancellor!" 
They had good reason to wonder at the mag- 
nificence of Thomas a Becket, for, when he en- 
tered a French town, his procession was headed 
by two hundred and fifty singiug boys; then, 
came his hounds in couples; then, eight wag- 
ons, each drawn by five horses driven by five 
drivers: two of the wagons filled with strong 
ale to be given away to the people; four, with 
his gold and silver plate and stately clothes; 
two, with the dresses of his numerous servants. 
Then came twelve horses, each with a monkey 
on his back; then, a train of people bearing 
shields, and leading fine war-horses splendidly 
equipped; then, falconers with hawks upon 
their wrists; then, a host of knights, and gen- 
tlemen and priests; then, the Chancellor with 
his brilliant garment" flashing in the sun, and 
all the people capering and shouting with de- 
light. 

The King was well pleased with all this, 
thinking that it only made himself the more 
magnificent to have so magnificent a favorite; 
but he somtiraes jested with the Chancellor 
upon his splendor too. Once, when they were rid- 
ing together through the streets of London in 
hard winter weather, they saw a shivering old 
man in rags. " Look at the poor object!" said 
the King. "Would it not be a charitable act 
to give that aged man a comfortable warm 
cloak?" " Undoubtedly it would," said 
Thomas a Becket, "and you do well, Sir, to 
think of such Christian "duties." "Come!" 
cried the King, "then give him your cloak!" 
It was made of rich crimson trimmed with 
ermine. The King tried to pull it off, the 
Chancellor tried to keep it on, both were near 
rolling from their saddles in the mud, when the 
Chancellor submitted, and the King gave the 
cloak to the old beggar: much to the beggar's 
astonishment, and much to the merriment of 
all the courtiers in attendance. For, courtiers 
are not only eager to laugh when the King 
laughs, but they really do enjoy a laugh against 
a Favorite. 

"I will make," thought King Henry the 
Second, "this Chancellor of mine, Thomas a 



16 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



Beckot, Archbishop of Canterbury. He will 
then be the head of the Church, and, being de- 
\ oted to me, will help me to correct the Church, 
lie has always upheld my power against the 
power of the clergy, and once publicly told 
some of the bishops (I remember) that men 
of the Church are equally bound to me with 
men of the sword. Thomas a Becket is the 
man, of all other men in England, to help me 
in my great design." So the King, regardless 
of all objection, either that he was a fighting 
man, or a lavish man, or a courtly man, or a 
man of pleasure, or anything but a likely man 
for the office, made him Archbishop accord- 
ingly 

Now, Thomas a Becket was proud, and loved 
to be famous. He was already famous for the 
pomp of his life, for his riches, his gold and 
silver plate, his wagons, horses, and attend- 
ants. He could do no more in that way than 
he had done; and, being tired of that kind of 
fame (which is a very poor one), he longed to 
have his name celebrated for something else. 
Nothing, he knew, would render him so fa- 
mous in the world as the setting of his utmost 
power and ability against the utmost power and 
ability of the King. He resolved with the 
whole strength of his mind to do it. 

He may have had some secret grudge against 
the King besides. The King m'ay have offend- 
ed his proud humor at some time or other, 
for anything I know. I think it likely, because 
it is a common thing for Kings, Princes, and 
other great people, to try the tempers of their 
favorites rather severely. Even the little affair 
of the crimson cloak must have been anything 
but a pleasant one to a haughty man. Thomas 
a, Becket knew better than any one in England 
what the King expected of him. In all his 
sumptuous life, he had never yet been in a 
position to disappoint the King. He could 
take ii]) that proud sland now, as head of the 
Church; and he determined that it should be 
written in history, either that he subdued the 
King, or that the King subdued him. 

So, of a sudden, he completely altered the 
whole manner of his life. He turned off all his 
brilliant followers, ate coarse food, drank bitter 
water, wore next his skin sackcloth covered 
with dirt and vermin (for it was then thought 
very religious to be very dirty), flogged his 
back to punish himself, lived chiefly in a little 
cell, washed the feet of thirteen poor people 
every day, and looked as miserable as he possi- 
bly could. If he had put twelve hundred mon- 
keys on horseback instead of twelve, and had 
gone in procession with eight thousand wagons 
instead of .eight, he could not have half astonished 
the people so much as by this great change. It 
soon caused him to be more talked about as an 
Archbishop than he had been as a Chancellor. 

The King was very angry; and was made still 
more so, when the new Archbishop, claiming 
various estates from the nobles as being right- 
fully Church property, required the King him- 
self, for the same reason, to give up Rochester 
Castle, and Rochester City too. Not satisfied 
with this, he declared that no power but him- 
self should .appoint a priest to any church in 
the part of England over which he was Arch- 
bishop ; and when a certain gentleman of Kent 
made such an appointment, as he claimed to 
have the right to do, Thomas a Becket excom- 
municated him. 

Excommunication was, next to the Interdict 
I told you of at the close of the last chapter, the 
great weapon of the clergy. It consisted in 
declaring the person who was excommunicated 
an outcast from the Church and from all re- 
ligious offices; and in cursing him all over, from 
the top of his head to the sole of his foot, 
whether he was standing up, lying down, sit- 
ting, kneeling, walking, running, hopping, 
jumping, gaping, coughing, sneezing, or what- 
ever else he was doing. This unchristian non- 
sense would, of course, have made no sort of 
difference to the person cursed — who could say 
his prayers at home if he were shut out of 
church, and whom none but God could judge 
— but for the fears and superstitions of the peo- 
ple, who avoided excommunicated persons, and 
made their lives unhappy. So, the King said 
to the new Archbishop, " Take off this Ex- 
communication from this gentleman of Kent." 
To which the Archbishop replied, " I shall do 
no such thing." 

The quarrel went on. A priest in Worcester- 
shire committed a most dreadful murder, that 
aroused the horror of the Whole nation. The 
King demanded to have this wretch delivered 
up, to be tried in the same court and in the 
same way as any other murderer. The Arch- 



bishop refused, and kept him in the Bishop's 
prison. The King, holding a solemn assembly 
in Westminster Hall demanded that in future 
all priests found guilty before their Bishops 
of crimes against the law of the land should be 
considered priests no longer and should be de- 
livered over to the law of the land for punish- 
ment. The Archbishop again refused. The 
King required to know whether the clergy 
would obey the ancient customs of the coun- 
try? Every priest there, but one, said, after 
Thomas a Becket, "Saving my order." This 
really meant that they would only obey those 
customs when they did not interfere with their 
own claims ; and the King went out of the Hall 
in great wrath. 

Some of the clergy began to be afraid, now, 
that they were going too far. Though Thoinas 
& Becket was otherwise as unmoved as West- 
minster Hall, they prevailed upon him, for the 
sake of their fears, to go to the King at Wood- 
stock, and promise to observe the ancient cus- 
toms of the country, without saying anything 
about his order. The King received this sub- 
mission favorably, and summoned a great coun- 
cil of the clerg}^ to meet at the Caslle of Claren- 
don, by Salisbury. But, when the council met, 
the Archbishop again insisted on the words 
" saving my order;" and he still insisted, 
though lords entreated him, and priests wept 
before him and knelt to him, and an adjoining 
room was thrown open, filled with armed sol- 
diers of the King, to threaten him. At length he 
gave way for that time, and the ancient customs 
(which included what the King had demanded 
in vain) were stated in writing, and were signed 
and sealed by the chief of the clergy, and were 
called Constitutions of Clarendon. 

The quarrel went on for all that. The Arch- 
bishop tried to see the King. The King would 
not see him. The Archbishop tried to escape 
from England. The sailors on the coast would 
launch no boat to take him away. Then, he 
again resolved to do his worst in opposition to 
the King, and began openly to set the ancient 
customs at defiance. 

The King summoned him before a great 
Council at Northampton, where he accused 
him of high treason, and made a claim against, 
him, which was not a just one, for an enormous 
sum of money. Thomas a Becket was alone 
against the whole assembly, and the very Bishops 
advised him to resign his office and abandon his 
contest with the King. His great anxiety and 
agitatiou stretched him on a sick-bed for two 
days, but he was still undaunted. Be went to 
the adjourned Council, carrying a great cross in 
his right hand, and sat down holding it erect 
before him. The King angrily retired into an 
inner room. The whole assembly angrily re- 
tired, and left him there. But there he sat. 
The Bishops came out again in a body, and re- 
nounced him as a traitor. He only said, 
" I hear!" and sat there still. They retired 
again into the inner room, and his trial pro- 
ceeded without him. By and by, ,the Earl of 
Leicester, heading the barons, came out to read 
his sentence. He refused lo hear it, denied the 
power of the court, and said he would refer his 
cause to the Pope. ' As he walked out of the 
hall, with the cross in his hand, some of those 
present picked up rushes— rushes were strewn 
upon the floors in those days by way of carpet 
— and threw them at him. He proudly turned 
his head, and said that were he not Archbishop, 
he would chastise those cowards with the 
sword he had known how to use in bygone 
days. He then mounted his horse, and rode 
away, cheered and surrounded by the common 
people, to whom he threw open his house that 
night, and gave a supper, supping with Ihem 
himself. That same night he secretly departed 
from the town; and so, traveling by night and 
hiding by day, and calling himself " Brother 
Dearman," got away, not without difficulty, 
to Flanders. 

The struggle still went on. The angry King 
took possession of the revenues of the archbish- 
opric, and banished all the relations and serv- 
ants of Thomas a Becket, to the number of four 
hundred. The Pope and the French King both 
protected him, and an abbey was assigned for 
liis residence. Stimulated by this support, 
Thomas a, Becket, on a great festival day, form- 
ally proceeded to a great church crowded with 
people, and, going up into the pulpit, publicly 
cursed and excommunicated all who had sup- 
ported the Constitutions of Clarendon: men- 
tioning many English noblemen by name, and 
not distantly hinting at the King of England 
himself. 

When intelligence of this new affront was 



carried to the King in his chamber, his passion 
i was so furious that he tore his clothes, and 
j rolled like a madman on his bed of straw and 
I rushes. But he was soon, up and doing. He 
ordered all the ports and coasts of England to be 
narrowly watched, that no letters of Interdict 
might be brought into the kingdom; and sent 
messengers and bribes to the Pope's palace at 
Rome. Meanwhile, Thomas a Becket, for his 
part, was not idle at Rome, but constantly em- 
ployed his utmost arts in his own behalf. Thus 
the contest stood, until, there was a peace be- 
tween France and England (which bad been for 
some time at war) and until the two children of 
the two Kings were married in celebration of it. 
Then, the French King brought about a 
meeting between Henry and his old favorite, so> 
long his enemy. 

Even then, though Thomas "a Becket knelt 
before the King he was obstinate and immova- 
ble as to those words about his order. King' 
Louis of France was weak enough in his ven- 
eration for Thomas a Becket and such men, but 
this was a little too much for him. He said that 
a Becket " wanted to be greater than the saints, 
and better than St. Peter," and rode away from 
him, with the King of England. His poor 
French Majesty asked a Becket's pardon for so- 
doing, however, soon afterward, and cut a very 
pitiful figure. 

At last, and after a world of trouble, it came 
to this. There was another meeting on French 
ground between King Henry and Thomas & 
Becket, and it was agreed that Thomas a Becket 
should be Archbishop of Canterbury, according 
to the customs of former Archbishops, and that 
the King should put him in possession of the' 
revenues of that post. And now, indeed, you 
might suppose the struggle at an end. and 
Thomas a Becket at rest. No, not even yet. 
For Thomas a Becket hearing, by some means, 
that King Henry, when he was in dread of his- 
kingdom being placed under an interdict, had 
had his eldest son Prince Henry secretly 
crowned, not only persuaded the Pope to sus- 
pend the Archbishop of York who had per- 
formed that ceremony, and to excommunicate 
the Bishops who had assisted at it, but sent a 
messenger of his own into England, in spite of 
all the King's precautions along the coast, who 
delivered the letters of excommunication into 
the Bishops' own hands. Thomas a Becket then 
came over to England himself, after an absence 
of seven years. He was privately warned that 
it was dangerous to come, and that an ireful 
knight, named Ranulf de Broc, had threatened 
that he should not live to eat a loaf of bread in 
England ; but he came. 

The common people received him well, and 
marched about with him in a soldierly way, 
armed with such rustic weapons as they could 
get. He tried to see the young Prince who had 
once been his pupil, but was prevented. He 
hoped for some little support among the noble 
priests, but found none. He made the most of 
the peasants who attended him, and feasted 
them, and went from Canterbury to Harrow-on- 
the-Hill, and from Harrow-on-the-Hill back to 
Canterbury, and on Christmas day preached in 
the Cathedral there, and told the people in his 
sermon that he had come to die among them, 
and that it Was likely he would be murdered. 
He had no fear, however — or, if he had any, he 
had much more obstinacy — for he, then and 
there, excommunicated three of his enemies, of 
whom Ranulf de Broc, the ireful knight, was 
one. 

As men in general had no fancy for being 
cursed, in their sitting and walking, and gaping 
and sneezing, and all the rest of it, it was very 
natural in the persons so freely excommuni- 
cated to complain to 1he King. It was equally 
natural in the King,- who had hoped that this 
troublesome opponent was at last quieted, to 
fall into a mighty rage when he heard of these 
new. affronts; and, on the Archbishop of York 
telling him that he never could hope for rest 
while"Thomas a Becket lived, to cry out hastily 
before his court, ' ' Have I no one here who 
will deliver me from this man?" There were 
four knights present, who, hearing the King's 
words, looked at one another, and went out. 

The names of these knights were Reginald 
Fitzurse, William Tracy, HughdeMorville, and 
Richard Brito; three of whom had been in the 
train of Thomas a Becket in the old days of his 
splendor. They rode away on horseback, in a 
very secret manner, and on the third day after 
Christmas day arrived at Saltwood House, not 
far from Canterbury, which belonged to the 
family of Ranulf de Broc. They quietly col- 
lected some followers here, in case they should 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



A1 



need any; and, proceeding to Canterbury, sud- 
denly appeared (the four knights and twelve 
men) before the Archbishop, in his own house, 
at two o'clock in the afternoon. Tbey neither 
bowed, nor spoke, but sat down on the floor in 
silence, staring at the Archbishop. 

Thomas a Becket said, at length, " What do 
you want?" 

" We want," said Reginald Fitzurse, the ex- 
communication taken from the Bishops, and 
you to answer for your offenses to the King." 

Thomas a Becket defiantly replied that the 
power of the clergy was above the power of the 
King. That it was not for such men as they 
-were to threaten him. That if he were threat- 
ened by all the swords in England, he would 
never yield. 

"-Then we will do more than threaten!" said 
the knights. And they went out with the 
twelve men, and put ou their armor, and drew 
their shining swords, and came back. 

His servants, in the meantime, bad shut up 
and barred the great gate of the palace. At 
first, the knights tried to shatter it with their 
battle-axes; but, being shown a window by 
which they could enter, they let the gate alone, 
and climbed iu that way. While they were bat- 
tering at the door, the attendants of Thomas a 
Becket had implored him to take refuge in the 
Cathedral; in which, as a sanctuary or sacred 
place, they thought the knights would dare to 
do no violent deed. He told them, again and 
again, that he would not stir. Hearing the dis- 
tant voices of the monks singing the evening 
service, however, he said it was now his duty to 
attend, aud therefore, and for no other reason, 
lie would go. 

There was a near way between his Palace and 
the Cathedral, by some beautiful old cloisters 
•which you may yet see. He went into the 
Cathedral, without any hurry, and having the 
Cross carried before him as usual. When he 
was safely there, his servants would have fast- 
ened the door, but he said, No! it was the house 
of God, and not a fortress. 

As he spoke, the shadow of Reginald Fitzurse 
appeared in the Cathedral doorway, darkening 
the little light there was outside ou the dark i 
wiuter evening. This knight said, in a strong 
voice, " Follow me, loyal servants of the King!" i 
The rattle of the armor of the other knights 
echoed through the Cathedral, as they came ! 
clashing iD. 

It was so dark in the lofty aisles and among 
the stately pillars of the church, and there were 
so many hiding-places in the crypt below and 
in the narrow passages above, that Thomas & ; 
Becket might even at that pass have saved him- 
self if he would. But he would not. He told 
the monks resolutely that he would not And 
though they all dispersed, and left him there 
with no other follower than Edward Gryme, 
his faithful cross-bearer, he was as firm then as 
ever he had been in his life. 

The knights came on through the darkness, 
making a terrible noise with their armed tread 
•upon the stone pavement of the church. 
" Where is the traitor?" they cried out. He 
inade no answer. But when they cried, " Where 
is the Archbishop?" he said proudly, " I am 
here!" and came out,of the shade, and stood 
before them. , 

The knights had no desire to kill him, if they 
■could rid the King and themselves of him by 
any other means. They told him he must either 
fly or go with them. He said he would do 
neither; and he threw William Tracy off with 
such force, when he took hold of his sleeve, that 
Tracy reeled again. By his reproaches and his 
steadiness he so incensed them, and exasperated 
their fierce humor, that Reginald Fitzurse, 
whom he called by an ill name, said, "Then 
die!" and struck at his head. But the faithful 
Edward Gryme put out his arm, aud there re- 
ceived the main force of the blow, so that it only 
made his master bleed. Another voice from 
among the knights again called to Thomas a 
Becket to fly. but, with his blood running down 
his face, and his hands clasped, and his head 
bent, he commended himself to God, and stood 
firm. Then they cruelly killed him close to the 
altar of St. Bennet; and his body fell upon the 
pavement, which was dirtied with his blood and 
brains. 

It is an awful thing to think of the mur- 
dered mortal, who had so showered his curses 
about, lying all disfigured, in the church, where 
a few lamps here and there were but red specks 
on a pall of darkness; and to think of the 
guilty knights riding away on horseback, look- 
ing over their shoulders at the dim Cathedral, 
and remembering what they had left inside. 



Pakt the Second. 

When the King heard how Thomas a Becket 
had lost his life in Canterbury, Cathedral, 
through the ferocity of the four Knights, he 
was filled with dismay. Some have supposed 
that when the King spoke those hasty words, 
" Have I no one here who will deliver me from 
this man?" he wished and meant a Becket to be 
slain. But few things are more unlikely; for, 
besides that the King was not naturally cruel 
(though very passionate), he was wise, and must 
have known full well what any stupid man in 
his dominions must have known, namely, that 
such a murder would rouse the Pope and the 
whole Church against him. 

He sent respectful messengens to the Pope, to 
represent his innocence (except in having ut- 
tered the hasty words); and he swore solemnly 
and publicly to his innocence, and contrived in 
time to make his peace. As to the four guilty 
Knights, who fled into Yorkshire, and never 
again dared to show themselves at court, the 
Pope excommunicated them; and they lived 
miserably for some time, shunned by all their 
countrymen. At last, they weut humbly to 
Jerusalem as a penance, and there died and were 
buried. 

It happened, fortunately for the pacifying of 
the Pope, that an opportunity arose, very soon 
after the murder of a Becket, for the King to 
declare his power in Ireland — which was an ac- 
ceptable undertaking to the Pope, as the Irish, 
who had been converted to Christianity by one 
Patricius (otherwise St. Patrick) long ago, 
before any Pope existed, considered that the 
Pope had nothing at all to do with them, or they 
with the Pope, and accordingly refused to pay 
him Peter's Pence, or that tax of a penny a 
house which 1 have elsewhere mentioned. The 
King's opportunity arose in this way. 

The Irish were, at that time, as barbarous a 
people as you can well imagine They were 
continually quarreling and fighting, cutting one 
another's throats, slicing one another's noses, 
burning one another's houses, carrying away 
one another's wives, and committing all sorts of 
violence. The country was divided into five 
kingdoms — Desmond, Thomond, Connaught, 
Ulster, and Leinster — each governed by a sepa- 
rate King, of whom one claimed to be the chief 
of the rest. Now, one of these Kings, named 
Dermond MacMurrough (a wild kind of name, 
spelt in more than one wild kind of way), had 
carried off the wife of a friend of his, and con- 
cealed her on an island in a bog. The friend 
resenting this (though it was quite the custom 
of the country), complained to the chief King, 
and, with the chief King's help, drove Dermond 
MacMurrough out of his dominions. Dermond 
came over to England for revenge; and offered 
to hold his real'.:', as a vassal of King Henry, if 
King Henry would help him to regain it. The 
King consented to these terms; but only as- 
sisted him, then, with what were called Letters 
Patent, authorizing any English subjects who 
were so disposed to enter into his service, and 
aid his cause. 

There was, at Bristol, a certain Earl Richard 
de Clare, called Strongbow; of no very good 
character; needy and desperate, and ready for 
anything that offered him a chance of improv- 
ing his fortunes. There were, in South Wales, 
two other broken knights of the same good for- 
nothing sort, called Robert Fitz-Stephen and 
Maurice Fitz-Gerald. These three, each with 
a small band of followers, took up Dermond's 
cause; and it was agreed that, if it proved suc- 
cessful, Strongbow should marry Dermond's 
daughter Eva, and be declared his heir. 

The trained English followers of these 
knights were so superior in all the discipline of 
battle to the Irish, that they beat them against 
immense superiority of numbers. In one fight, 
early in the war, they cut off three hundred 
heads, and laid them before MacMurrough; 
who turned them every one up with his hands, 
rejoicing, and, coming to one which was the 
head of a man whom he had much disliked, 
grasped it by the hair and ears, and tore off the 
nose and lips with his teeth. You may judge, 
from this, what kind of a gentleman an Irish 
King in those times was. The captives, all 
through this war, were horribly treated ; the vic- 
torious party making nothing of breaking their 
limbs, and casting them into the sea from the 
tops of high rocks. It was in the midst of the 
miseries and cruelties attendant on the taking of 
Waterford, where the dead lay piled in the 
streets, and the filthy gutters ran with blood, 
that Strongbow married Eva. An odious mar- 
riage company those mounds of corpses must 



have made, I think, and one quite worthy of the 
young lady's father. 

He died, after Waterford and Dublin had 
been taken, and various successes achieved; 
and Strongbow became King of Leinster. Now 
came King Henry's opportunity. To restrain 
the growing power of Strongbow. he himself re- 
paired to Dublin, as Strongbow's Royal Master, 
and deprived him of his kingdom, but confirmed 
him in the enjoyment of great possessions. The 
| King then, holding state in Dublin, received the 
homage of nearly all the Irish Kings and Chiefs, 
and so came home again with a great addition 
to his reputation as Lord of Ireland, and with a 
new claim on the favor of the Pope. And now 
their reconciliation was completed — more easily 
and mildly by the Pope than the King might 
have expected, I thiuk. 

At this period of his reign, when his troubles 
seemed so few and his prospects so bright, 
those domestic miseries began which gradually 
made the King the most unhappy of men, re- 
duced his great spirit, wore away his health, 
and broke his heart. 

He had four sons. Henry, now aged eight- 
een — his secret crowning of whom had given 
such offense to Thomas a, Becket; Richard, 
aged sixteen; Geoffrey, fifteen; and John, bis 
favorite, a young boy whom the courtiers named 
Lackland, because he had no inheritance, but 
to whom the King meant to give the Lordship of 
Ireland. All these misguided boys in their 
turn, were unnatural sons to him, and unnatu- 
ral brothers to each other. Prince Henry, 
stimulated by the French King, and by his bad 
mother, Queen Eleanor, began the undutiful 
history. 

First, he demanded that his young wife, Mar- 
garet, the French King's daughter, should be 
crowned as well as he. His lather, the King, 
consented, and it was done. It was no sooner 
done than he demanded to have a part of his 
father's dominions during his father's life. This 
being refused, he made off from his father in the 
night, with his bad heart full of bitterness, and 
took refuge at the French King's court. 
Within a day or two, his brothers Richard and 
Geoffrey followed. Their mother tried to join 
them — escaping in man's clothes — but she was 
seized by King Henry's men, and immured in 
prison, where she lay, deservedly, for sixteen 
years. Every day, however, some grasping 
English noblemen, to whom the King's protec- 
tion of his people from their avarice and oppres- 
sion had given offense, deserted him and joined 
the Princes. Every day he heard some fresh 
intelligence oi the Princes levying armies 
against him; of Prince Henry's wearing a 
crown before his own embassadors" at the 
French court, and being called the Junior King 
of England : of all the Princes swearing never to 
make peace with him, their father, without the 
consent and approval of the Barons of France. 
But. with his fortitude and energy unshaken, 
King Henry met the shock of these disasters 
with a resolved and cheerful face. He called 
upon all Royal fathers who had sons to help 
him, for his cause was theirs; he hired, out of 
his riches, twenty thousand men to fight the 
false French King, who stirred his own blood 
against him; and he carried on the war with 
such vigor, that Louis soon proposed a confer- 
ence to treat for peace. 

The conference was held beneath an oli, wide- 
spreadmg green elm-tree, upon a plain in France. 
It led to nothing. The war recommecced. 
Prince Richard began his fighting career by lead- 
ing an army against his father ; but his father 
beat him and his army back; and thousands of 
his men would have rued the day in which they 
fought in such a wicked cause, had not the King 
received news of an invasion of England by the 
Scots, and promptly come home through a great 
storm to repress it. And whether he really began 
to fear that he suffered these troubles because a 
Becket had been murdered; or whether he 
wished to rise in the favor of the Pope, who had 
now declared a Becket to be a saint, or in the 
favor of his own people, of whom many believed 
that even a Becket's senseless tomb could work 
miracles, I don't know: but ihe King no sooner 
landed in England than he went straight to 
Canterbury; and, when he came within sight of 
the distant Cathedral, he dismounted from his 
horse, took off his shoes, and walked with bare 
and bleeding feet to 3, Becket's grave. There, he 
lay down on the ground, lamenting in the pres- 
ence of many people ; and by and by he went into 
the Chapter-house, and removinghis clothes from 
his back and shoulders, submitted himself to be 
beaten with knotted cords (not beaten very hard, 
1 dare say, though) by eighty Priests, one after 



18 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



another. It chanced that on the very day when 
the King made this curious exhibition of him- 
self, a complete victory was obtained over the 
Scots; which very much delighted the Priests; 
who said that it was won because of his great ex- 
ample of repentance. For the Priests in general 
had found out, since a Becket'a death, that they 
admired him of all things— though they had 
hated him very cordially when he was alive. 

The Earl of Flanders, who was at the head of 
the base conspiracy of the King's undutif ul sons 
and their foreign friends, took the opportunity 
of the King being thus employed at home to lay 
siege to Rouen, the capital of Normandy. But 
the King, who was extraordinarily quick and 
active in all his movements, was at Rouen too, 
before it was supposed possible that he could 
have left England; and there he so defeated the 
said Eaii of Flanders, that the conspirators pro- 
posed peace, and his bad sons Henry and Geoffrey 
submitted. Richard resisted for six weeks; 
but, being beaten out of castle after castle, he at 
last submitted too, and his father forgave him. 
To forgive these unworthy Princes was only 
to afford them breathing time for new faithless- 
ness. They were so false, disloyal, and dishonor- 
able, that they were no more to be trusted than 
common thieves. In the very next year, Prince 
Henry rebelled again, and was again forgiven. In 
eight years more, Prince Richard rebelled against 
his elder brother; and Prince Geoffrey in- 
famously said that the brothers could never 
agree well together, unless they were united 
against their father. In the very next year after 
their reconciliation by the King, Prince Henry 
again rebelled against his father; and again sub- 
mitted, swearing to be true; and was again for- 
given; and again rebelled with Geoffrey. 

But the end of this perfidious Prince was 
come. He fell sick at a French town ; and his 
conscience terribly reproacldng him with his 
baseness, he sent messengers to the King his fa- 
ther, imploring him to come and see him, and to 
forgive him for the last time on his bed of death. 
The generous King, who had a royal and forgiv- 
ing mind toward his children always, would have 
gone; but this Prince had been so unnatural, that 
the noblemen about theKing suspected treachery, 
and represented to him that he could not safely 
trust his life with such a traitor, though his own 
eldest son. Therefore the King sent him a ring 
from off his finger as a token of fojegiveness; 
and when the Prince had kissed it, with much 
grief and many tears, and had confessed to those 
around him how bad, and wicked, and undutif ul 
a son he had been, he said to the attendant 
Priests: "Oh, tie a rope about 'my body, and 
draw me out of bed, and lay me down upon a 
bed of ashes, that I may die with prayers to 
God in a repentant manner!" And so he died, 
at twenty-seven years old. 

Three years afterward, Prince Geoffrey, being 
unhorsed at a tournament, had his brains .tram- 
pled out by a crowd of horses passing over him. 
So, there only remained Prince Richard and 
Prince John — who had grown to be a young 
man now, and had solemnly sworn to-be faith- 
ful to his father. Richard soon rebelled again, 
encouraged by his' friend the French King, 
Philip the Second (son of Louis, who was dead) ; 
and soon submitted, and was again forgiven, 
swearing on the New Testament never to rebel 
again; and, in another year or so, rebelled 
again; and, in the presence of his father, knelt 
down on his knee before the King of France, 
and did the French King homage; and declared 
that with his aid he would possess himself by 
force, of all his father's French dominions. 

And yet this Richard called himself a soldier 
of Our Saviour! And yet this Richard wore the 
Cross, which the Kings of France and England 
had both taken, in the previous year, at a broth- 
erly meeting underneath the old wide-spreading 
elm-tree on the plain, when they had sworn (like 
him) to devote themselves to a new Crusade, for 
the love and honor of the Truth! 

Sick at heart, wearied out by the falsehood of 
his sons, and almost ready to lie down and die, 
the unhappy King, who had so long stood firm, 
began to fail. But the Pope, to his honor, sup- 
ported him; and obliged the French King and 
Richard, though successful in fight, to treat for 
peace. Richard wanted to. be crowned King of 
England, and pretended that he wanted to be 
married (which he really did not) to the French 
King's sister, his promised wife, whom King 
Henry detained in England. King Henry 
wanted, on the other hand, that the French 
King's sister should be married to his favorite 
son, John: the only one of his sons (he said) 
who had never rebelled against him. At last 
King Henry, deserted by his nobles one by one, 



distressed, exhausted, broken-hearted, consented 
to establish peace. 

One flnal heavy sorrow was reserved for him, 
even yet. When they brought him the proposed 
treaty of peace, in writing, as he lay very ill in 
bed, they brought him also the list of the deserters 
from their allegiance, whom he was required to 
pardon. The first name upon this list was John, 
his favorite son, in whom he had trusted to the 
last. 

"Oh, John! child of my heart!" exclaimed 
the King in a great agony of mind. " Oh, John, 
whom I have loved the best ! Oh, John, for whom 
I have contended through these many troubles! 
Have you betrayed me too?" And then he lay 
down with a heavy groan and said, " Now let 
the world goasitwill. I care for nothing more!" 
After a time, he told his attendants to take him 
to the French town of Chinon — a town he had 
been fond of during many years. But he was 
fond of no place now; it was too true that he 
could care for nothing more upon this earth. 
He wildly cursed the hour when he was born, 
and cursed the children whom he left behind 
him : and expired. 

As, one hundred years before, the servile fol- 
lowers of the court had abandoned the Conqueror 
in the hour of his death, so they now abandoned 
his descendant. The very body was stripped, 
in the plunder of the Royal chamber; and it was 
not easy to find the jaeans of carrying it for 
burial to the abbey church of Fontevraud. 

Richard was said in after years, by way of 
flattery, to have the heart of a Lion. It would 
have been far better, I think, to have had the 
heart of a Man. His heart, whatever it was, 
had cause to beat remorsefully within his breast 
when he came — as he did — into the solemn abbey, 
and looked on his dead father's uncovered face. 
His heart, whatever it was, had been a black and 
perjured heart in all its dealings with the de- 
ceased King, and more deficient in a single 
touch of tenderness than any wild beast's in the 
forest. 

There is a pretty story told of this Reign, 
called the story of Fair Rosamond. It relates 
how the King doted on Fair Rosamond, who 
was the loveliest girl in all the world ; and how 
he had a beautiful Bower built for her in a 
Park at Woodstock; and how it was erected in 
a labyrinth, and could only be found by a clew of 
silk. How the bad Queen Eleanor, becoming 
jealous of Fair Rosamond, found out the secret 
of the clew, and one day appeared before her, 
with a dagger and a cup of poison, and left her 
to the choice between those deaths. How Fair 
Rosamond, after shedding many piteous tears and 
offering many useless prayers to the cruel Queen , 
took the poison, and fell dead in the midst of 
the beautiful bower, while the unconscious birds 
sang gayly all around her. 

Now, there was a Fair Rosamond, and she 
was (1 dare say) the loveliest girl in all the world, 
and the King was certainly very fond of her, 
and the bad Queen Eleanor was certainly made 
jealous. But I am afraid — I say afraid, because 
I like the story so much — that there was no 
bower, no labyrinth, no silken clew, no dagger, 
no poison. I am afraid Fair Rosamond retired 
to a nunnery near Oxford, and died there peace- 
ably; her sister-nuns hanging a silken drapery 
over her tomb, and often dressing it with flow- 
ers, in remembrance of the youth and beauty 
that had enchanted the King when he too was 
young, and when his life lay fair before him. 

It was dark and ended now; faded and gone. 
Henry Plantagenet lay quiet in the abbey church 
of Fontevraud, in the fifty-seventh year of his 
age — never to be completed — after governing- 
England well for nearly thirty-five years. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE FIRST, CALLED 
THE LION -HEART. 

In the year of our Lord one thousand one 
hunderd and eighty-nine, Richard of the Lion 
Heart succeeded to the throne of King Henry 
the Second, whose paternal heart he had done 
so much to break. He had been, as we have 
seen, a rebel from his boyhood ; but, the moment 
he became a King against whom others might 
rebel, he found out that rebellion was a great 
wickedness. In the heat of this pious discovery, 
he punished all the leading people who had be- 
friended him against his father. He could 
scarcely have done anything that would have 
been a better instance of his real nature, or a 
better warning to fawners and parasites not to 
trust in lion-hearted princes. 



He likewise put his late father's treasurer in 
chains, and locked him up in a dungeon, from 
which he was not set free until he had relin- 
quished, not only all the Crown treasure, but 
all his own money too. So, Richard certainly 
got the Lion's share of the wealth of this 
wretched treasurer, whether he had a Lion s 
heart or not. 

He was crowned King of England, with great 
pomp, at Westminster: walking to the Cathedral 
under a silken canopy stretched on the tops of 
four lances, each carried by a great lord. On 
the day of his coronation a dreadful murdering 
of the Jews took place, which seems to have given 
great delight to numbers of savage persons 
calling themselves Christians. The King had 
issued a proclamation forbidding the Jews (who 
were generally hated, though they were the most 
useful merchants in England) to appear at the 
ceremony; but, as they had assembled in Lon- 
don from all parts, bringing presents to show 
their respect for the new Sovereign, seme of 
them ventured down to Westminster Hall with 
their gifts ; which were very readily accepted. 
It is supposed, now, that some noisy fellow in 
the crowd, pretending to be a very delicate 
Christian, set up a howl at this, and' struck a ' 
Jew who was trying, to get in at the Hall door 
with his present. A riot arose. The Jews who 
had got into the Hall were driven forth ; and 
some of the rabble cried out that the new King 
had commanded the unbelieving race to be put to 
death. Thereupon the crowd rushed through 
the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering all 
the Jews they met; and, when they could find 
no more out of doors (on account of their having 
fled to their houses, and fastened themselves in), 
they ran madly about, breaking open all the 
houses where the Jews lived, rushing in and 
stabbing or spearing them, sometimes even 
flinging old people and children out of win- 
dow into blazing fires they had lighted up below. 
This great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty hours, 
and only three men were punished for it. Even, 
they forfeited their lives, not for murdering and 
robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of 
some Christians. 

King- Richard, who was a strong restless 
burly man, with one idea always in his head, 
and that the very troublesome idea of breaking 
the heads of other men, was mightily impatient 
to go on a Crusade to the Holy Land with a 
great army. As great armies could not be raised 
to go, even to the Holy Land, without a ^.reat 
deal of money, he sold the Crown domains, and 
even the high offices of State; recklessly ap- 
pointing noblemen to rule over his English sub- 
jects, not because they were fit to govern, but be- 
cause they could pay high for the privilege. In 
this way, and by selling pardons at a dear rate, 
and by varieties of avarice and oppression, he 
scraped together a large treasure. He then ap- 
pointed two Bishops to take care of his king- 
dom in his absence, and gave great powers and 
possessions to his brother John, to secure his 
friendship. Jdhn would rather have been made 
Regent of' England; but he was a sly man, and 
friendly to the expedition; saying to himself, no 
doubt, ' ' The more fighting, the more chance of 
my brother being kilted ; and when he is killed, 
then 1 become King John!" v 

Before the newly levied army departed from 
England, the recruits and the general populace 
distinguished themselves by astonishing cruel- 
ties on the unfortunate Jews; whom, in many 
large towns, they murdered by hundreds in the 
most horrible manner. 

At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in 
the castle, in the absence of its Governor, after 
the wives and children of many of them had 
been slain before their e.yes. Presently came 
the Governor, and demanded admission. " How 
can we give it thee, O Governor," said the Jews 
upon the walls, " when, if we open the gate by 
so much as the width of a foot, the roaring 
crowd behind thee will press in and kill us?" 

Upon this, the unjust Governor became 
angry, and told the people that he approved of 
their killing those Jews; and a mischievous 
maniac of a friar, dressed all in white, put him- 
self at the head of the assault, and they as- 
saulted the castle for three days. 

Then said Jocen, the head Jew (who was a 
Rabbi, or Priest), to the rest, " Brethren, there 
is no hope for us with the Christians who are 
hammering at the gates and walls, and who 
must soon break in. As we and our wives and 
children must die, either by Christian hands, or 
by our own, let it be by our own. Let us destroy 
by fire what jewels and other treasure we have 
here, then fire the castle, and then perish!" 

A few could not resolve to do this, but the 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



19 



greater part complied. They made a blazing 
heap ol all their valuables, and, when those 
were consumed, set the castle in flames. While 
the Haines roared and crackled around them, 
and, shooting up into the sky, turned it blood- 
red,' J ocen cut the throat of his beloved wife, 
and stabbed himself. All the others who had 
wives or children did the like dreadful deed. 
When the populace broke in, they found (except 
the trembling few, cowering in corners, whom 
they soon killed), only heaps of greasy cinders, 
with here and there something like part of the 
blackened trunk of a burnt tree, but which had 
lately been a human creature, formed by the 
beneficent hand of the Creator as they were. 

After this bad beginning, Richard and his 
troops went on, in no very good manner, with 
the Holy Crusade. It was undertaken jointly 
by the King of England and his old friend 
Philip of France. They commenced the busi- 
ness by reviewing their forces, to the number of 
one hundred thousand men. Afterward, they 
severally embarked their troops for Messina, in 
Sicily, which was appointed as the next place 
of meeting. 

King Richard's sister had married the King 
of this place, but he was dead; and his uncle 
Tancred had usurped the crown, cast the Royal 
Widow into prison, and possessed himself of 
her estates. Richard fiercely demanded his sis- 
ter's release, the restoration of her lands, and 
(according to the Royal custom of the Island) 
that she should have a golden chair, a golden 
table, i'our-aud-twenty silver cups, and four- 
and-twenty silver dishes. As he was too power- 
ful to be successfully resisted, Tancred yielded 
to his demands; and then the French King grew 
jealous, and complained that the English King 
wanted to be absolute in the Island of Messina 
and everywhere else. Richard, however, cared 
little or nothing for this complaint; and, in con- 
sideration of a present of twenty thousand pieces 
of gold, promised his pretty little nephew Ar- 
thur, then a child of two years old, in marriage 
to Taucred's daughter. We shall hear again of 
pretty little Arthur by and by. 

This Sicilian affair arranged without any- 
body's brains being knocked out (which must 
have rather disappointed him), King Richard 
took his sister away, and also a fair lady named 
Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love in 
France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor 
(so long iu prison, you remember, but released 
by Richard on his coming to the throne), had 
brought out there to be his wife; and sailed 
with them for Cyprus. 

He soon had the pleasure of fighting the King 
of the Island of Cyprus, for allowing his sub- 
jects to pillage some of the English troops who 
were shipwrecked on the shore; and easily con- 
quering this poor monarch, he seized his only 
daughter, to be a companion to the Lady Beren- 
garia, and put the King himself into silver fet- 
ters. • He then sailed away again with his 
mother, sister, wife, and the captive Princess; 
and soon arrived before the town of Acre, which 
the French King with his fleet was besieging 
from the sea. But the French King was in no 
triumphant condition, for his army had been 
thinued by" the swords of the Saracens, and 
wasted by the plague; and Saladin, the brave 
Sultan of the Turks, at the head of a numerous 
army, was at that time gallantly defending the 
place from the hills that rise above it. 

Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, 
they agreed in few points except in gaming, 
drinking, and quarreling in a most unholy man- 
ner; in debauching the people among whom 
they tarried, whether they were friends or foes; 
and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet 
places. The French King was jealous of the 
English King, and the English King was jeal- 
ous of the French King, and the disorderly and 
violent soldiers of the two nations were jealous 
of one another; consequently, the two Kings 
could not at first, agree, even upon a joint as- 
sault on Acre; but, when they did make up their 
quarrel for that purpose, the Saracens promised 
to yield the town, to give up to the Christians 
the wood of the Holy Cross, to set at liberty all 
their Christian captives, and to pay two hun- 
dred thousand pieces of gold. All this was to be 
done within forty days; but, not being done, 
King Richard ordered some three thousand 
Saracen prisoners to be brought out in the front 
of his camp, and there, in full view of their 
own countrymen, to be butchered. 

The French King had no part in this crime ; 
for he was by that time traveling homeward 
with the greater part of his men; being offended 
by the overbearing conduct of the English King; 
being anxious to look after his own dominions; 



and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome air 
of thai hot and sandy country. King Richard 
carried on the war without him; and remained 
in the East, meeting with a variety of adven- 
tures, nearly a year and a half. Every night 
when his army was on the march, and came to 
a halt, the heralds cried out three times, to re- 
mind all the soldiers of the cause in which they 
were engaged, " Save the Holy Sepulcher!" and 
then all the soldiers knelt and said " Amen!" 
Marching or encamping, the army had contin- 
ually to strive with the hot air of the glaring 
desert, or w ith the Saracen soldiers animated 
and directed by the brave Saladin, or with 

| both together. Sickness and death, battle and 

! wounds, were always among them; but through 
every difficulty King Richard fought like a 
giant, and worked like a common laborer. Long 
and iong after he was quiet in his grave, his 
terrible battle-ax, with twenty English pounds 
of English steel in its mighty head, was a legend 
among the Saracens; and when all the Saracen 
and Christian hosts had been dust for many a 
year, if a Saracen horse started at any object by 
the wayside, his rider would exclaim, " What 
dost thou fear, Fool? Dost thou think King 
Richard is behind itV" 

No one admired this King's renown for 
bravery more than Saladin himself, who was a 
generous and gallant enemy. When Richard 
lay ill of a fever, Saladm sent him fresh fruits 
from Damascus, and snow from the mountain- 
tops. Courtly messages and compliments were 

! frequently exchanged between them — and then 
King Richard would mount his horse and kill 
as many Saracens as he could; and Saladin 
would mount his, and kill as many Christians 
as he could. In this way King Richard fought 
to his heart's content at Arsoof and at Jaffa; 
and finding himself with nothing exciting to do 
at Ascalon, except to rebuild, for his own de- 
fense, some fortifications there which the Sara- 
cens had destroyed, he kicked his ally, the 
Duke of Austria, for being too proud to work 
at them. 
The army at last came within sight of the 

! Holy City of Jerusalem ; but, being then a mere 
nest of jealousy, and quarreling and fighting, 
soon reared, and agreed with the Saracens upon 
a truce for three years, three months, three days, 
and three hours. Then, the English Christians, 
protected by the noble Saladm from Saracen re- 
venge, visited Our Saviour's tomb ; and then King 
Richard embarked with a small force at Acre 
to return home. 

But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, 
and was fain to pass through Germany, under 
an assumed name. Now, there were many peo- 
ple in Germany who had seryed in the Holy 
Land under that proud Duke of Austria who 
had been kicked; and some of them, easily re- 
cognizing a man so remarkable as King Rich- 
ard, carried their intelligence to the kicked 
Duke, who straightway took him prisoner at a 
little inn near Vienna. 

The Duke's master the Emperor of Germany, 
and the King of France, were equally delighted 
to have so troublesome a monarch in safe keep- 
ing. Friendships which are founded on a 
partnership in doing wrong are never true; and 
the Kiug of France was now quite as heartily 
King Richard's foe as he had ever been his 
friend in his unnatural conduct to his father. He 

| monstrously pretended that King Richard had 

' designed to poison him in the East; be charged 
him with having murdered there a man whom 
he had ;n truth befriended; he bribed the Em- 
peror of Germany to keep him close prisoner; 
and, finally, through the plotting of these two 
princes, Richard was brought before the German 

I legislature, charged with the foregoing crimes, 

I and many others. But he defended himself so 
well, that many of the assembly were moved to 
tears by his eloquence and earnestness. It was 
decided that he should be treated, during the 
rest of his captivity, in a manner more becom- 

j ing his dignity than he had been, and that he 
should be 'set free on the payment of a heavy 
ransom. This ransom the English people will- 
ingly raised. When Queen Eleanor took it over 
to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused. 
But she appealed to the honor of all the Princes 
of the German Empire in behalf of her son, 
and appealed so well that it was accepted, and 

1 the King released. Thereupon, the King of 
France wrote to Prince John — " Take care of 

I thyself. The devil is unchained ! ' ' 

Prince John had reason to fear his brother, 
for he had been a traitor to him in his capivity. 
He had secretly joined the French King; had 
vowed to the English nobles and 'people that 
his brother was dead; and had vainly tried to 



seize the crown. He was now in France, at a 
place called Evreux. Being the meanest and 
basest of men, he contrived a mean and base ex- 
pedient for makiug himself acceptable to his 
brother. He invited the French officers of the 
garrison in that town to dinner, murdered them 
all, and then took the fortress. With this re- 
commendaiion to the good will of a lion-hearted 
monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on 
his knees before him, and obtained the interces- 
sion of Queen Eleanor. " I forgive him," said 
the Kiug, " and I hope I may forget the iujury 
he has done me as easily as I know he will for- 
get my pardon." 

While King Richard was in Sicily, there had 
been trouble in his dominions at home: one of 
the bishops whom he had left in charge thereof, 
arresting the other, and making, iu his pride 
and ambition, as great a show as if he were kiug 
himself. But the King hearing of it at Mes- 
sina, and appointing a new Regency, this Long- 
champ (for that was his name) had fled to 
France in a woman's dress, and had there been 
encouraged and supported by the French King. 
With all these causes of offence against Philip 
in his mind, Kiug Richard had no sooner been 
welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects 
with great display and splendor, and had no 
sooner been crowned afresh at Winchester, than 
he resolved to show the French King that the 
Devil was unchained indeed, and made war 
against him with great fury. 

There was fresh trouble at home about this 
time, arising cut of the discontents of the poor 
people, who complained that they were far 
more heavily taxed than the rich, and who 
found a spirited champion in William Fitz-Os- 
bert, called Longbeard. He became the leader 
of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand 
men; he was seized by surprise; he stabbed the 
citizen who first laid hands upon him; and re- 
treated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he 
maintained four days, until he was dislodged by 
fire, and run through the body as he came out. 
He was not killed, "though ; for he was dragged, 
half dead, at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, 
and there hanged. Death was long a favorite 
remedy for silencing the people's advocates ; but, 
as we go on with this history, I fancy we shall 
find them difficult to make an end of, for all 
that. 

The French war, delayed occasionally by a 
truce, was still in progress when a certain Lord 
named Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, chanced 
to find in his ground a treasure of ancient coins. 
As the King's vassal, he sent the Kiug half 
of it; but the King claimed the whole. The 
lord refused to yield the whole. The King be- 
sieged the lord in his castle, swore that he would 
tak e the castle by storm, and hang every man of 
its defenders on the battlements. 

There was a strange old song in that part of 
the country, -to the effect that in Limoges an ar- 
row would be made by which King Richard 
would die. It may be that Bertrand de Gour- 
don, a young man who was one of the defend- 
ers of the castle, had often sung it or heard it 
sung of a winter night, and remembered it when 
he saw, from his post upon the ramparts, the 
King, attended only by bis chief officer, riding 
below the walls surveying the place. He drew 
an arrow to the head, took steady aim, said be- 
tween his teeth, " Now I pray God speed thee 
well, arrow!" discharged it, and struck the 
King in the left shoulder. 

Although the wound was not at first con- 
sidered dangerous it was severe enough to cause 
the King to retire to his tent, and direct the as- 
sault to be made without him. The castle was 
taken, and every man of its defenders was 
hanged, as the King had sworn all should be, 
except Bertrand de Gourdon, who was reserved 
until the Royal pleasure respecting him should 
be known. 

By that time unskillful treatment had made 
the wound mortal, and the King knew that he 
was dying. He directed Bertrand to be brought 
into his tent. The young man was brought 
there, heavily chained. King Richard looked 
at him steadily. He looked as steadily at the 
King. 

"Knave!" said King Richard. " What have 
I done to thee that thou shouldest take my life V" 

" What hast thou done to me?" replied the 
3 r oung man. " With thine own hands thou 
hast killed my father and my two brothers. My- 
self thou wouldest have hanged. Let me die 
now by any torture that thou wilt. My comfort 
is. that no torture can save Thee. Thou too 
must die; and through me the world is quit of 
thee!" 

Again the King looked at the young man 



20 



.A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



steadily. Again the young man looked steadily 
at him. Perhaps some remembrance of his gen- 
erous enemy Saladin, who was not a Christian, 
came into the mind of the dying King. 

"Youth!'' he said, "I forgive thee. Go 
unhurt!" 

Then, turning to the chief officer who had 
been riding in his companj' when he received 
the wound, King Bichard said: 
■ " Take off his chains, give him a hundred 
shillings, and let him depart." 

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist 
seemed in his weakened eyes to fill the tent 
wherein he had so often rested, and he died. 
His age was forty-two; he had reigned ten 
years. His last command was not obeyed ; for 
the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdor 
alive, and hanged him. 

There is an old tune yet known — a sorrowful 
air will sometimes outlive many generations of 
strong men, and even last longer than battle- 
axes' with twenty pounds of steel in the head — 
by which this King is said to have been discov- 
ered in his captivity. Blondel, a favorite min- 
strel of King Bichard, as the story relates, faith- 
fully seeking his Boyal master, went singing it 
outside the gloomy walls of many foreign fort- 
resses and prisons; until at last he heard it 
echoed from within a dungeon, and knew the 
voice, and cried out in ecstasy, " Oh, Bichard! 
Oh, my King!" You may believe it, if you like; 
it would be easy to believe worse things. King 
Bichard was himself a Minstrel and a Poet. If 
he had not been a Prinze to, he might have 
been a better man, perhaps, and might have 
gone out of the world with less blodshed and 
waste of life to answer for. 



King Philip was so perfidious, that Arthur, be- ; so appealed to Hubert de Bourg (or Burgh) 
tween the two, might as well have been a lamb the warden of the castle, who had a love "for 
between a fox and a wolf. But, being so young, i him, and was an honorable tender man, that 
lie was ardent and flushed with hope; and, Hubert could not bear it. To his- eternal honor 
when the people of Brittany (which was his in- I he prevented the torture from being performed, 
heritance) sent him five hundred more knights and, at his own risk, sent the savages away, 
and five thousand foot-soldiers, he believed his j The chafed and disappointed King bethought 
fortune was made. The people of Brittany had himself of the stabbing suggestion next, and, 
been fond of him from his birth, and had re- | with his shuffling manner and his cruel face' 



quested that he might be called Arthur, in re- 
membrance of that dimly famous English Ar- 
thur of whom I told you early in this book, 
whom he believed to have been the brave friend 
and companion of an old King of their own. 
They had tales among them about a prophet 



proposed it to one "William de Bray. "I am a 
gentleman, fnd not an executioner," said 
William de Bray, and left the presence with dis- 
dain. 

But it was not difficult for a King to hire a 
murderer in those days. King John found one 



called Merlin (of the same old time), who had ( for his money,, and sent him down to the Castle 

3 of Falaise. " On what errand dost thou come?" 
said Hubert to this fellow. " To dispatch young 
Arthur," he returned. " Go back to him who 
sent thee," answered Hubert, "and say (hat I 
will doit." 

King John, very well knowing that Hubert 
would never do it, but that he couragously sent 
his reply to save the Prince or gain time, dis- 



foretold that their own King should be restored 
to them after hundreds of years ; and they be- 
lieved that the prophecy would be fulfilled in 
Arthur; that the time would come when he 
would rule them with a crown of Brittany upon 
his head; and when neither King of France 
nor King of England would have any power 
over them. When Arthur found himself riding 



in a glittering suit of armor on a richly capari- J patched messengers to convey the young prisoner 
soned horse, at the head of his train of knights ' 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACK- 
LAND. 

At two-and-thirty years of age, John became 
King of England. His pretty little nephew Ar- 
thur had the best claim to the throne; but John 
seized the treasure, and made fine promises to 
the nobility, and got himself crowned at 'West- 
minster within a few weeks after his brother 
Richard's death. 1 doubt whether the crown 
could possibly have been put upon the head of a 
meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if 
England had been searched from end to end to 
find him out. 

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowl- 
edge the right of John to his new dignity, and 
declared iu favor of Arthur. You must not sup- 
pose that he had any generosity of feeling for 
the fatherless boy ; it'merely suited his ambitious 
schemes to oppose the King of England. So 
John and the French King went to war about 
Arthur. 

He was a handsome boy, at that time only 
twelve years old. He was not born when his 
father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at 
the tournament; and, besides the misfortune of 
never having known a father's guidance and 
protection, he had the additional misfortune to 
have a foolish mother (Constance by name), lately 
married to her third husband. She took Arthur, 
upon John's accession, to the French King, who 
pretended to be very much his friend, and who 
made him a Knight, and promised him his 
daughter in marriage; but who cared so little 
about him in reality, that finding it his interest 
to make peace with King John for a time, he 
did so without the least consideration for the 
poor little Prince, and heartlessly sacrificed all 
his interests. 

Young Arthur, for two years afterward, lived 
quietly; and in the course of that time his moth- 
er died. But, the French King then finding it 
his interest, to quarrel with King John again, 
again made Arthur his pretense, and invited the 
orphan boy to court. ' ' You know your rights, 
Prince," said the French King, "and you 
would like to be a King. Isitnotso?" "Truly," 
said Prince Arthur, "I should greatly like to 
be a King!" " Then," said Philip, " you shall 
have two hunderd gentlemen who are Knights 
of mine, and with them you shall go to win 
back the provinces belonging to you, of which 
your uncle, the usurping King of England, has 
■ taken possession. I myself, meanwhile, will 
head a force against him in Normandy. " Poor 
Arthur was so flattered and so grateful that he 
signed a treaty with the crafty French King, 
agreeing to consider him his superior Lord, and 
that the French King should keep for himself 
whatever he could take from King John. 
Now, King John was so bad in all ways, and 



and soldiers, he began to believe this too, and to 
consider old Merlin a very superior prophet. 

He did not know — how could he, being so in- 
nocent and inexperienced? — that his little army 
was a mere nothing against the power of the 
King of England. The French King knew it; 
but the poor boy's fate was little to him, so that 
the King of England was worried and distressed. 
Therefore King Philip went his way into Nor- 
mandy, and Prince Arthur went his way toward 
Mirebeau, a French town near Poictiers, both 
very well pleased. 

Prince Arthur went to attack the town of 
Mirebeau, because his grandmother Eleanor, who 
has so often made her appearance in this history 
(and who had always been his mother's enemy), 
was living there, and because his Knights said, 
" Prince, if you can take her prisoner, you will 
be able to bring the King your uncle to terms!" 
But she was not to be easily taken. She was 
old enough by this time — eighty — but she was 
as full of stratagem as she was full of years and 



to the Castle of Rouen. 

Arthur was soon forced from the good Hubert 
— of whom he had never stood in greater need 
than then — carried away by night, and lodged in 
his new prison; where, through his grated win- 
dow, he could hear the deep waters of the river 
Seine rippling against the stone wall below. 

One dark night, as he lay sleeping, dreaming, 
perhaps, of fescue by those unfortunate gentle- 
men who were obscurely suffering and dying in 
his cause, he was roused, and bidden by his 
jailer to come down the staircase to the foot of 
the t >wer. He hurriedly dressed himself and 
obeyed. When they came to the bottom of the 
winding stairs, and the night air from the river 
blew upon their faces, the jailer trod upon his 
torch, and put it out. Then Arthur, in the dark 
ness, was hurriedly drawn into a solitary boat. 
And in that boat he found his uncle and one 
other man. 

He knelt to them, and prayed them not to 
murder him. Deaf to his entreaties, they stabbed 



him, and sunk his body in the river with heavy 
wickedness. Beceiving intelligence of young ■ stones. When the spring morning broke, the 
Arthur's approach, she shut herself up in a high j tower door was closed, the boat was gone, the 
tower, and encouraged her soldiers to defend it ' river sparkled on its way, and never more was 
like men. Prirce Arthur with his little army j any trace of the poor boy beheld by mortal eyes, 
besiged the high tower. King John, hearing j The news of this atrocious murder being 
how matters stood, came up to the rescue with his spread in England, awakened a hatred of the 



army. So here was a strange family party! The 
boy-Prince besieging his grandmother, and his 
uncle besieging him ! 

This position of affairs did not last long. One 



King (already odious for his many vices, and 
for his having stolen away and married a noble 
lady while his own wife was living) that never 
slept again through his whole reign. In Brittany 



summer night King John, by treacherj , got his j the indignation was intense. Arthur's own sister 
men into the town, surprised Prince Arthur's Eleanor was in the power of John, and shut up 
force, took two hundred of his knights, and j in a convent at Bristol, but his half-sister Alice 
seized the Prince himself in his bed. The J was in Brittany. The people chose her, and the 
Knights were put in heavy irons, and driven murdered Prince's father-in-law, the last hus- 
away in open carts drawn by bullocks, to various : band of Constance, to represent them ; and car- 
dungeons where they were most inhumanly iried their fiery complaints to King Philip. King 
treated, and where some of them were starved ' Philip summoned King John (as the holderof 
to death. Prince Arthur was sent to the Castle j territory in France) to come before him and 
of Falaise. 1 defend himself. King John refusing to appear, 

One day, while he was in prison at that castle, King Philip declared him false, perjured, and 
mournfully thinking it strange that one so young 'guilty; and again made war. In a little time, 
should be in so much trouble, and looking out ! by conquering the greater part of his French ter- 
of the small window in the deep dark wall, at j ritory, King Philip deprived him of one third 
the summer sky and the birds, the door was I of his dominions. And, through all the fighting 
softly opened, and he saw his uncle the King ! that took place, King John was always found, 
standing in the shadow of the archway, looking j either to be eating or drinking, like a gluttonous 
very grim. fool, when the danger was at a distance, or to 

" Arthur," said the King, with his wicked ! be running away, like a beaten cur, when it was 
eyes more on the stone floor than on his nephew, near. 



"Sou might suppose that when he was losing 
his dominions at this rate, and when his own 
nobles cared so little for him or his cause that 
they plainly refused to follow his banner out of 
England, he had enemies enough. But he made 
another enemy of the Pope, which he did in this 
way. 



The Archbishop of Canterbury dying, and the 
junior monks of that place wishing to get the 



will you not trust to the gentleness, the friend- 
ship, and the truthfulness of your loving uncle?" 

" I will tell my loving uncle that," replied the 
boy, " when he does me right. Let him restore 
to me my kingdom of England, and then come 
to me and ask the question." 

The King looked at him and went out. ' ' Keep 
that boy close prisoner," said he to the warden 
of the castle. 

Then, the King took secret counsel with the ! start of the senior monks in the appointment of 
worst of his nobles how the Prince was to be got ! his successor, met together at midnight, secretly 
rid of Some said, " Put out his eyes and keep ! elected a certain Beginald, and sent him off to 
him in prison, as Bobert of Normandy was ! Rome to get the Pope's approval. The senior 
kept." Others said, "Have him stabbed." monks and the King soon finding this out, and 
Others " Have him hanged." Others, "Have being very angry about it, the junior monks 
him poisoned. " gave way, and all the monks together elected the 

Kin°- John feeling that in any case, whatever Bishop of Norwich, who was the King's favor- 
was doue afterward^ it would be a satisfaction ! ite. The Pope, hearing the whole story, de- 
to his mind to have those handsome eyes burnt ' clared that neither election would do for him, 
out that had looked at him so proudly while his ' and that he elected Stephen Langton. The 
own Boyal eyes were blinking at the stone floor, ' monks submitting to the Pope, the King turned 
sent certain ruffians to Falaise to blind the boy them all out bodily, and banished them as trai- 
with red-hot irons. But Arthur so pathetically ! tors. The Pope sent: three bishops to the King, to 
entreated them, and shed such piteous tears, and threaten him with an Interdict. The Kmg told 



A CHILD'S HISXORT OF ENGLAND. 



21 



the bishops that, if any Interdict were laid upon 
his kingdom, he would tear out the eyes and cut 
off the noses of all the monks he could lay hold 
of, and send them over to Rome in that undeco- 
rated state as a present for their master. The 
bishops, nevertheless, soon published the Inter- 
dict, and fled. 

After it had lasted a year, the Pope proceeded 
to his nest step; which was Excommunication. 
King John was declared excommunicated, with 
all the usual ceremonies. The King was so in- 
censed at this, and was made so desperate by 
the disaffection of his Barons and the hatred of 
his people, that it is said he even privately sent 
embassadors to the Turks in Spain, offering to 
renounce his religion and hold his kingdom of 
them if they would help him. It is related that 
the embassadors were admitted to the presence 
of the Turkish Emir through long lines of 
Moorish guards, and that they found the Emir 
with his eyes seriously fixed ou the pages of a 
large book, from which he never once looked up. 
That they gave him a letter from the King con 
taining his proposals.and were gravely dismissed. 
That presently the Emir sent for one of them, and 
conjured him, by his faith in his religion, to say 
what kind of man the King of England truly was? 
That the embassador, thus pressed, replied that 
the King of England was a false tyrant, against 
whom his own subjects would soon rise. And 
that this was quite enough for the Emir. 

Money being, in his position, the next best 
thing to men. King John spared no means of 
getting it. He set on foot another oppressing 
and torturing of the unhappy Jews (which was 
quite in his way), and invented a new punish- 
ment for one wealthy Jew of Bristol. Until 
such time as that Jew should produce a certain 
large sum of mone} r , the King sentenced him to 
be imprisoned, and, every day, to have one tooth 
violently wrenched out of his head — beginning 
with the double teeth. For seven days the op- i 
pressed man bore the daily pain, and lost the 
daily tooth ; but.on the eighth, he paid the money, j 
With the treasure raised in such ways, the King- 
made an expedition into Ireland, where some 
English nobles had revolted. It was one of the 
very few places from which he did not run away ; 
because no resistance was shown. He made an- 
other expedition into Wales — whence he did run 
away in the end: but not before he had got from 
the Welsh people, as hostages, twenty seven 
young men of the best families; every one of 
whom he caused to be slain in the following year. 
To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope 
now added his last sentence — Deposition. He 
proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all 
his subjects from their allegiance, and sent 
Stephen Langton and others to the King of 
France to tell him that, if he would invade Eng- 
land, he should be forgiven all his sins — at least, 
should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that 
would do. 

As there was nothing that King Philip desired 
more than to invade England, he collected a 
great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen 
hundred ships to bring them over. But the Eu- 
glish people, however bitterly they hated the 
King, were not a people to suffer invasion 
quietly. They flocked to Dover, where the En- 
glish standard was, in such great numbers to en- ' 
roll themselves as defenders of their native land, 
that there were not provisions for them, and the 
King could only select and retain sixty thousand. 
But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own 
reasons for objecting to either King John or 
King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He 
intrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, 
with the easy task of frightening King John. 
He sent him to the English camp, from France, 
to terrify him with exaggerations of King 
Philip's power, and his own weakness in the 
discontent of the English Barons and people. 
Pandolf discharged his commission so well, that 
King John, in a wretched panic, consented to 
acknowledge Stephen Langton; to resign his 
kingdom "to God, St. Peter, and St. Paul "— 
which meant the Pope ; and to hold it, ever 
afterward, by the Pope's leave, on payment of 
an annual sum of money. To this shameful 
contract he publicly bound himself in the church 
of the Knights Templars at Dover: where he 
laid at the legate's feet a part of the tribute, 
which the legate haughtily trampled upon. But 
they do say that this was merely a genteel flour-* 
ish, and that he was afterward seen to pick it up 
and pocket it. 

There was an unfortunate prophet, of the 
name of Peter, who had greatly increased King 
John's terrors by predicting that he would be 
unknighted (which the King supposed to signify | 
that he would die) before the Feast of the Ascen- 



sion should be past. That was the day after this 
humiliation. When the next morning came, 
and the King, who had been trembling all night, 
found himself alive and safe, he ordered the 
prophet — and his son too — to be dragged through 
the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, 
for having frightened him. 

As King John had now submitted, the Pope, 

to King Philip's great astonishment, took him 

under his protection, and informed King Philip 

I that he found he could not give him leave to in- 

j vade England. The angry Philip resolved to 

I do it without his leave; but he gained nothing, 

J and lost much ; for, the English, commanded 

by the Earl of Salisbury, went over, infivehun- 

j dred ships, to the French coast, before the French 

fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated 

: the whole. 

The Pope then took off his three sentences, 
■ one after another, and empowered Stephen Lang- 
ton publicly to receive King John iuto the favor 
; of the Church again, and to ask him to dinner. 
! The King, who hated Langton with all his might 
I and main — and with reason too, for he was a 
great and a good man, with whom such a King 
could have no sympathy — pretended to cry and 
to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty 
about settling how much the King should pay 
as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he 
had caused them ; but, the end of it was, that 
l the superior clergy got a good deal, and the in- 
ferior clergy got little or nothing — which has 
also happened since King John's time, 1 be- 
lieve. 

When all these matters were arranged, the 
King in his triumph became more fierce, and 
false, and insolent to all around him than he had 
ever been. Au alliance of sovereigns against 
King Philip gave him an opportunity of land- 
ing an army in France ; with which he even took 
a town! But, on the French King's gaining a 
great victory, he ran away, of course, and made 
a truce for five years. 

And now the time approached when he was 
to be still further humbled, and made to feel, if 
he could feel anything, what a wretched creature 
he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen 
Langton seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose 
and subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and 
destroyed the property of his own subjects, be- 
cause, their Lords, the Barons, would not serve 
him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved 
and threatened him. When he swore to restore 
the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King 
Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his 
falsehood, and pursued him through all his eva- 
sions. When the Barons met at the Abbey of 
St. Edmund's Bury, to consider their wrongs 
and the King's oppressions, Stephen Langton 
roused them by his fervid words to demand a 
solemn charter of rights and liberties from their 
perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on 
the High Altar, that they would have it, or 
would wage war against him to the death. 
When the King hid himself in London from the 
Barons, and was at last obliged to receive them, 
they told him roundly they would not believe 
him unless Stephen Langton became a surety 
that he would keep his word. When he took 
the Cross to invest himself with some interest, 
and belong to something that was received with 
favor, Stephen Langton was still immovable. 
When he appealed to the Pope, and tbe Pope 
wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new 
favorite, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the 
Pope himself, and saw before him nothing but 
the welfare of England and the crimes of the 
English King. 

At Easter- time the Barons assembled at Stam- 
ford, in Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, 
inarching near to Oxford, where the King was, 
delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton 
and two others a list of grievances. ' ' And these, : ' 
they said, " he must redress, or we will do it 
for ourselves!" When Stephen Langton told the 
King as much, and read the list to him, he went 
half mad with rage. But that did hira no more 
good than Mb afterward trying to pacify the 
Barons with lies. They called themselves and 
their followers " The army of God and the Holy 
Church." Marching through the country, with 
the people thronging to them everywhere (except 
at Northampton, where they failed in an at- 
tack upon the castle), they at last triumphantly 
set up their banner in London itself, whither the 
whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock 
to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the 
knights in England, remained with the King; 
who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl 
of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he ap- 
proved of everything, and would meet them to 
sign their charter when they would. " Then," 



said the Barons, " let the day be the fifteenth of 
June, and the place Runny-Mead." 

On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thou- 
sand two hundred and fourteen, the King came 
from Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from 
the town of Staines, and they met on Runny- 
Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the 
Thames, where rushes grow in the clear water 
of the winding river, and its banks are green 
j with grass and trees. On the side of the Barons 
came the General of their army, Robert Fitz- 
; Walter, and a great concourse of the nobility of 
j England. With the King came, in all, some f our- 
and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom 
despised him, and were merely his advisers in 
form. On that great day, and iu that great com- 
pany, the King signed Magna Charta — the Great 
j Charter of England— by which he pledged him- 
self to maintain the Church and its rights ; to re- 
lieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vas- 
sals of the Crown— of which the Barons, in their 
turn, pledged thernslves to relieve their vassals, 
the people; to respect the liberties of London 
and all other cities and boroughs; to protect 
foreign merchants who came to England; to im- 
prison no man without a fair trial; and to sell, 
delay, or deny justice to none. As the Barons 
knew his falsehood well, they further required, 
as their securities, that he should send out of his 
kingdom all his foreign troops; that for two 
months they should hold possession of the city 
of Loudon, and Stephen Langton of the Tower; 
and that five-and-twenty of their body, chosen 
I by themselves, should be a lawful committee to 
watch the keeping of the Charter, and to make 
war upon him it lie broke it. 

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the 

Charter with a smile, and, if he could have 

j looked agreeable, would have done so, as he de- 

' parted from the splendid assembly. When he 

got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a 

madman in his helpless fury. And he broke the 

I Charter immediately afterward. 

He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent 
to the Pope for help, and plotted to take Lon- 
don by surprise, while the Barons should be 
holding a great tournament at Stamford, which 
they had agreed to hold there as a celebration of 
the Charter. The Barons, however, found him 
out, and put it off. Then, when the Barons de- 
sired to see him and tax him with his treachery, 
he made numbers of appointments with them, 
and kept none, and shifted from place to place, 
and was constantly sneaking and skulking 
about. At last he appeared at Dover, to join his 
foreign soldiers, of whom numbers came into 
his pay; and with them he besieged and took 
Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights 
and soldiers of the Barons. He would have 
hanged them every one; but the lea'der of the 
foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English 
people might afterward do to him, interfered to 
save the knights; therefore the King was fain to 
satisfy his vengeance with the death of all the 
common men. Then, he sent the Earl of Salis- 
bury, with one portion of his army, to ravage the 
eastern part of his own dominions, while he car- 
ried fire and slaughter into the northern part; 
torturing, plundering, killing, and iuflicting 
every possible cruelty upon the people; and, 
every morning, setting a worthy example to his 
men by setting fire, with his own monster hands, 
to the house where he had slept last night. Nor 
was this all ; for the Pope, coming to the aid of 
his precious friend, laid the kingdom under an 
Interdict again, because the people took part 
with the Barons. It did not much matter, for 
the people had grown so used to it now, that 
they had begun to think notlrng about it. It 
oscurred to them — perhaps to Stephen Langton 
too — that the}' could keep their churches open, 
and ring their bells, without the Pope's permis- 
sion at well as with it. So, they tried the ex- 
periment — and found that it succeeded perfectly. 
It being now impossible to bear the country, 
as a wilderness of cruelty, or longer to hold any 
terms with such a forsworn outlaw of a King, 
the Barons sent to Louis, son of the French 
monarch, to offer him the English crown. Car- 
ing as little tor the Pope's excommunication of 
him, if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his 
father may have cared for the Pope's forgive- 
ness of his sins, he landed 'at Sandwich (King- 
John immeditely running away from Dover, 
where he happened to be), and went on to Lon- 
don. The Scottish King, with whom many of 
the Northern English Lords had taken refuge; 
numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the 
±<arons, and numbers of the people went over to 
him every day; King John, the while, continu- 
ally running away in all directions. The career 
of Louis was checked, however, by the suspi- 



22 



A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. 



cions of the Barons, founded on the dying decla- 
ration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom 
was conquered he was sworn to banish them as 
traitors, and to give their estates to some of his 
own Nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of 
the Barons hesitated: others even went over to 
King John. 

It seemed to be the turning-point of King 
John's fortunes, for, in his savage and murder- 
ous course, he had now taken some towns, and 
met with some successes. But, happily for Eng- 
land and humanity, his death was near. Cross- 
ing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, 
not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up, 
and nearly drowned his army. He and his sol- 
diers escaped; but, looking back from the shore 
when he was safe, he saw the roaring water 
sweep down in a torrent, overturn the wagons, 
horses, and men that carried his treasure, and 
ingulf them in a raging whirlpool from which 
nothing could be delivered. 

Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fin- 
gers, he went on to Swinestead Abbey, where 
the monks set before him quantities of pears, 
and peaches, and new cider— some say poison 
too, but there is very little reason to suppose so 
— of which he ate and drank in an immoderate 
and beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burn- 
ing fever, and haunted with horrible fears. 
Next day, they put him in a horse-litter, and 
earned him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed 
another night of pain and horror. Next day, 
they carried him, wilh greater difficulty than on 
the day before, to the Castle of Newark upon- 
Trent; and there, on the eighteenth of Octo- 
ber, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the 
seventeenth of liis vile reign, was an end of this 
miserable brute. 



CHAPTER XV. 



ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE THIRD, CALLED 
OF 'WINCHESTER, 

If any of the English Barons remembered the 
murdered Arthur's sister, Eleanor the fair maid 
of Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol, 
none among them spoke of lier now, or main- 
tained her right to the Crown. The dead Usurp- 
er's eldest boy, Henry by name, was taken by 
the Earl of Pembroke, the Marshal of England, 
to the city of Gloucester, and there crowned in 
great haste when he was only ten years old. As 
the crown itself had been lost, with the King's 
treasure, in the raging water, and as there was 
no time to make another, they put a circle of 
plain gold upon his head instead. "We have 
been the enemies of this child's father," said 
Lord Pembroke, a good and true gentleman, to 
the few Lords who were present, " and he merit- 
ed our ill will; but the child himself, is innocent, 
and his youth demands our friendship and pro- 
tection." Those Lords felt tenderly toward the 
little boy, remembering their own young chil- 
dren; and they bowed their heads, and said, 
" Long live King Henry the Third!" 

Next, a great Council met at Bristol, revised 
Magna Charier, and made Lord Pembroke 
Regent or Protector of England, as the King- 
was too young to reign alone. The next thing 
to be done was to get rid of Prince Louis of 
France, and to win over those English Barons 
who were still ranged under his banner. He 
was strong in many parts of England, and in 
London itself ; and he held, among other places, 
a certain castle called the Castle of Mount Sorel, 
in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some 
skirmishing and truce-making, JLord Pembroke 
laid siege. Louis dispatched an army of six 
hundred knights and twenty thousand soldiers 
to relieve it. Lord Pembroke, who was not 
strong enough for such a force, retired with all 
his men. The army of the French Prince, which 
had marched there with fire and plunder, 
marched away with fire and plunder, and came, 
in a boastful, swaggering mauner, to Lin- 
coln. The town submitted ; but the castle in the 
town, held by a brave widow lady, named 
Nichola de Camville (whose property it was), 
made such a sturdy resistance, that the 
French Count in command of the army of the 
French Prince found it necessary to besiege this 
castle. While he was thus engaged, word was 
brought to him that Lord Pembroke, with four 
hundred knights, two hundred and fifty men 
with crossbows, and a stout force both of horse 
and foot, was marching toward him. " What 
care I?" said the French Count. " The English- 
man is not so mad as to attack me and my great 
army in a walled town!" But the Englishman 
did it for all that, and did it — not so madly, but 
o wisely, that he decoyed the great army into 



I the narrow, ill-paved lanes and by-ways of Lin- 

! coin, where its horse- soldiers could not ride in 
any strong body ; and there he made such havoc 
with them that the whole force surrendered 

! themselves prisoners except the Count ; who said 
that he would never yield to any English traitor 
alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of 

' this victory, which the English called, for a 

i joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in 

I those times — the common men were slain with- 

j out any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen 

1 paid ransom and went home. 

The wife of Louis, the fair Blanche of Castile, 
dutifully equipped a fleet of eighty good ships, 
and sent it over from France to her husband's 
aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good 
and some bad, gallantly met them near the mouth 

j of the Thames, and took or sunk sixty-five in 
one fight. This great loss put an end to the 

I French Prince's hopes. A treaty was made at 
Lambeth, in virtue of which the English Barons 

] who had remained attached to his cause returned 
to their allegiance, and it was engaged on both 

I sides that the Prince and all his troops should 
retire peacefully to France. It was time to go; 
for war had made him so poor that he was 
obliged to borrow money from the citizens of 
London to pay his expenses home. 

Lord Pembroke afterward applied himself to 
governing the country justly, and to healing 
the quarrels and disturbances that had arisen 
among men in the days of the bad King John. 
He caused Magna Charta to be still more im- 
proved, and so amended the Forest Laws that a 
Peasant was no longer put to death for killing a 
stag in a Royal Forest, but was only imprisoned. 

. It would have been well for England if it could 

l have had so good a Protector many years longer, 
but that was not to be. Within three years after 
the young King's coronation, Lord Pembroke 
died; and you may see his tomb, at this day, in 
the old Temple Church in London. 

The Protectorship was now divided. Peter 
de Roches, whom King John had made Bishop 
of Winchester, was intrusted with the care of the 
person of the young sovereign; and the exercise 
of the Royal authority was confided to Earl 
Hubert de Burgh. These two personages had 
from the first no liking for each other, and soon 
became enemies. When the young King was 
declared of age, Peter de Roches, finding that 
Hubert increased in power and favor, retired 
discontentedly, and went abroad. For nearly 
ten years afterward Hubert had full sway alone. 
But ten years is a long time to hold the favor 
of a King. This King, too, as he srew up, 
showed a strong resemblance to his father, in 
feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution. The 
best that can be said of him is that he was not 
cruel. De Roches coming home again, after ten 

! years, and being a novelty, the King began to 
favor him, and to look coldly on Hubert. Want- 
ing money besides, and having made Hubert 

' rich, he began to disike Hubert. At last he was 
made to believe, or pretended to believe, that 

| Hubert had misappropriated some of the Royal 
treasure; and ordered him to furnish an account 
of all he had done in his administration. Be- 
sides which, the foolish charge was brought 
against Hubert that he had made himself the 
King's favorite by magic. Hubert, very well 
kn wing that he could never defend himself 
against such nonsense, and that his old enemy 
must be determined on his ruin, instead of an- 
swering the charges, fled to Merton Abbey. Then 
the King, in a violent passion, sent for the Mayor 
of London, and said to the Mayor, " Take twenty 
thousand citizens, and drag me Hubbert de 
Burgh out of that abbey, and bring him here." 
The Mayor posted off to do it, but the Arch- 
bishop of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert's) 
warning the King that an abbey was a sacred 
place, and that, if he committed any violence 
there, he must auswer for it to the Church, the 
King changed his mind and called the Mayor 
back, and declared that Hubert should have 
four months to prepare his defense, and should 
be safe and free during that time. 

! -Hubert, who relied upon the King's word, 
though I think he was old enough to have 
known better, came out of Merton Abbey upon 
these conditions, and journeyed away to see his 
wife: a Scottish Princess, who was then at St. 

■ Edmund's Bury. 

Almost as soon as he had departed from the 
Sanctuary, his enemies persuaded the weak 

| King to send out one Sir Godfrey de Cran- 

1 comb, who commanded three hundred vaga- 
bonds called the Black Band, with orders to 

I seize him. They came up with him at a little 

' town in Essex, called Brentwood, when he was 
in bed. He leaped out of bed, got out of the 



house, fled to the church, ran up to the altar, 
and laid his hand upon the cross. Sir Godfrey 
and the Black Band, caring neither for church, 
altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the church- 
door, with their drawn swords flashing round his 
head, and sent for a Smith to rivet a set of 
chains upon him. When the Smith (I wish I 
knew his name!) was brought, all dark and 
swarthy with the smoke of his forge, and pant- 
ing with the speed he had made; and the Black 
Band, falling aside to show him the Prisoner, 
cried with a loud uproar, " Make the fetters 
heavy! make them strong!" the Smith dropped 
upon his knee — but not to the Black Band — and 
said, " This is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh, 
who fought at Dover Castle, and destroyed The 
French fleet, and has done his country much 
good service. You may kill me if you like, 
but 1 will never make a chain for Earl Hubert 
de Burgh!" 

The Black Band never blushed, or they might 
have blushed at this. They knocked the Smith 
about from one to another, and swore at him, 
and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as lie 
was, and carried him off to the Tower of Lon- 
don. The Bishops, however, were so indignant 
at the violation of the Sanctuary of the Church, 
that the frightened King soon ordered the Black 
Band to take him back again; at the same time 
commanding the Sheriff of Essex to prevent his 
escaping out of Brentvwood Church. Well ! the 
Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the church, 
and erected a high fence, and watched the 
church night and day; the Black Band and their 
Captain watched it too, like three hundred and 
one black wolves. For thirty-nine days Hubert 
de Burgh remained. within. At length, upon 
the fortieth day, cold and hunger were too much 
for him, and he gave himself up to the Black 
Band, who carried him off, for the second time, 
to the Tower. When his trial came on, he re- 
fused to plead; but at last it was arranged that 
he should give up all the Royal lands which bad 
been bestowed upon him, and should be kept at 
the Castle of Devizes, in what was called " free 
prison," in charge of four knights appointed by 
four lords. There he remained almost a year, 
until, learning that a follower of his old enemy 
the Bishop was made Keeper of the Castle, and 
fearing that he might be killed by treachery, he 
climbed the ramparts one dark night, dropped 
from the top of the high castle wall into the 
moat, and coming safely to the ground, took 
refuge in another church. From this place he 
was delivered by a party of horse dispatched to 
help by some nobles, who were by this time in 
revolt against the King, and assembled in Wales. 
He was finally pardoned and restored to his es- 
tates, but he lived privately, and never more 
aspired to a high post in the realm, or to a high 
place m the King's favor. And thus end — more 
happily than the stories of many favorites of 
kings — the adventures of Earl Hubert de 
Burgh. 

The nobles, who had risen in revolt, were 
stirred up to rebellion by the overbearing con- 
duct of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding 
that the King secietly hated the Great Charter 
which had been forced from his father, did his 
utmost to confirm him in that dislike, and in 
the preference he showed to foreigners over the 
English. Of this, and of his even publicly de- 
claring that the Barons of England were inferior 
to those of France, the English Lords com- 
plained wilh such bitterness, that the King, 
finding them well supported by the clergy, be- 
came frightened for his throne, and sent away 
the Bishop and all his foreign associates. On 
his marriage, however, with Eleanor, a French 
lady, the daughter of the Count of Provence, 
he openly favored the foreigners again; and so 
many of his wife's relations came over, and 
made such an immense family party at court, 
and got so many good things, and pocketed so 
much money, and were so high with the En- 
glish whose money they pocketed, that the 
bolder English Barons murmured openly about 
a clause there was in the Great Charter, which 
provided for the banishment of unreasonable 
favorites. But, the foreigners only laughed dis- 
dainfully and said, "What are your English 
' laws to us?" 

King Philip of France had died, and had been 
[ succeeded by Prince Louis, who had also died 
'•after a short reign of three years, and had been 
succeeded by his son of the same name— so 
moderate and just a man that he was not the 
least in the world like a King as kings went. 
Isabella, King Henry's mother, wished very 
much (for a certain spite she had) that England 
should make war against this King; and. as 
King Henry was a "mere puppet in anybody's 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



23 



hands who knew how to manage his feebleness, were headed by Simon de Montfort, Earl of 
she easily carried her point with him. But, Leicester, married to King Henry's sister, and, 
the Parliament were determined to give him no though a foreigner himself, the most popular 
money tor such a war. So. to def}- the Parlia- man in England against the foreign favorites. 
inent, he packed up thirty large casks of silver When the King next met his Parliament, the 
— I don't know how he got so much; I dare say . Barons, led by this Earl, came before him, 
he screwed it out of the miserable Jews — and armed from head to foot, and cased in armor. 
put them aboard ship, and went away himself When the Parliament again assembled, in a 
ry war into Prance: accompanied by his month's time, at Oxford, this Earl was at their 
mother and his brother Richard. Earl of Corn- | head, and the King was obliged to consent, on 
wall, who was rich and clever. But he only j oath, to what was called a Committee of Gov- 
got well beaten, and came home. erument: consisting of twenty-four members: 

The good-humor of the Parliament was not j twelve chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen 
restored by this. They reproached the King i by himself. 

with wasting the public money to make greedy j But, at a good time for him, his brother Rich- 
foreigners rich, aud were so stern with him, and ard came back. Richard's first act (Die Barons 
so determined not to let him have more of it to j would not admit him into England on other 
was I- if they could help it, that he was at his I terms) was to swear to be faithful to Ihe Com- 
wits' end for some, and tried so shamelessly to | mittee of Government — which he immediately 
get all he could from his subjects, by excuses or began to oppose with all his might. Then, the 
by force, that the people used to say the King i Barons began to quarrel among themselves; es- 
was the sturdiest beggar in England. He took ' pecially the proud Earl of Gloucester with 
the Cross, thinking to get some money by that j the Earl of Leicester, who went abroad in dis- 
means ; but, as it was very well known that he ; gust. Then the people began to be dissatisfied 
never meant to go on a crmade, he got none, with the Barons, because the}' did not do enough 
In all this contention, the Londoners were par- I for them. The King's chances seemed so good 
ticularly keen against the King, aud the King ! again at length, that he took heart enough — or 
hated them warmly in return. Hating or lov- caught it from his brother — to tell the Committee 
ing, however, made no difference; he continued of Government that he abolished them — as to his 
in" the same condition for nine or ten years, I oath, never mind that, the Pope said! — and to 
when at last the Barons said that, if he would '• seize all the money in the Mint, and to shut 
solemnly coufirm their liberties afresh, the Par- j himseif up in the Tower of London. Here he 
liament would vote him a large sum. was joined by his eldest son, Prince Edward; 

As he readily consented, there was a great I and. from the lower, he made public a letter of 
meeting held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant [ the Pope's to the world in general, informing 
day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in ' all men that he had been an excellent and just 
their robes, and holding every one of them a King for five-and-forty years, 
burning candle in his hand, stood up (the Bar- [ As everybodj' knew he had been nothing of 
ons being also there) while the Archbishop of | the sort, nobody cared much for this document. 
Canterbury read the sentence of excommunica- j It so chanced that the proud Earl of Gloucester 

dying, was succeeded by his son; and that his 



tion against any man, and all men, who should 
henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great 
Charter of the Kingdom. When he had done, 
they all put out their burning candles with a 
curse upon the soul of any one, and every one, 
who should merit that sentence. The King 
concluded with an oath to keep the Charter, 
"As I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am 
a Knight, as I am a King!" 

It was easy to make oaths, and easy to break 
them; and the King did both, as his father had 
done before him. He took to his old courses 



son, instead of being the enemy of the Ear] of 
Leicester, was (for the time) his friend. It fell 
out, therefore, that these two Earls joined their 
forces, took several of the Royal castles in the 
country, and advanced as hard as they could on 
London. The London people, always opposed 
to the King, declared for them with great joy. 
The King himself remained shut up, not at all 
gloriously, iu the Tower. Prince Edward made 
the best of his way to Windsor Castle. His 
mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by 



again when he was supplied with money, and [water; but, the people seeing her barge rowing 
soon cured of their weakness the few who had I up the river, and hating "her with" all their 
ever really trusted him. When his money was I hearts, ran to London Bridge, got together a 



gone, and he was once more borrowing and bei 
ging everywhere with a meanness worthy of his 
nature, he got into a difficulty with the Pope re- 
specting the Crown of Sicily, which the Pope 
said he had si right to give away, and which he 
offered to King Henry for his second son, 
Prince Edmund. But, if you or I give away 
what we have not got, and what belongs to 
somebody else, it is likely that the person to 
whom we give it will have some trouble in tak- 
ing it. It was exactly so in this case. It was 
necessary to conquer the Sicilian crown before 
it could be put upon young Edmund's head. It 
could not be conquered without money. The 
Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The 
clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as 
usual: they had been disputing with him for 
some time about his unjust preference of Italian 
Priests in England; and they had begun to 
doubt whether the King's chaplain, whom he 
allowed to be paid for preaching in seven hun- 
dred churches, could possibly be, even by the 
Pope's favor, in seven hundred places at once. 
" The Pope and the King together," said the 
Bishop of London, " may take the miter off my 
head: but, if they do, they will find that 1 shail 
put on a soldier's helmet. I pay nothing." 
The Bishop of Worcester was as bold as "the 
Bishop of London, and would pay nothins 
either. Such sums as the more timid or more 
helpless of the clergy did raise were squandered 
away, without doing any good to the King, or 
brin- 1 ig the Sicilian Crown an inch nearer to 
Prince Edmund's head. The end of the busi- 
ness 3, that the Pope gave the Crown to the 
bro her of the King of France (who conquered 
himself), and sent the King of England 
iu a bill of one hundred thousand pounds for the 
expi - ol not having won it. 

The King was now so much distressed that we 
might almost pity him. if it were possible to 
pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. His 
clever brother. Richard," had bought the title of 
King of the Romans from the German people. 



quantity of stones and mud, and pelted the 
barge as it came through, crying furiously, 
" Drown the Witch! Drown her!" They were 
so near doing it, that the Mayor took the old 
lady under his protection, and^shut her up iu St. 
Paul's until the danger was past. 

It would require a great deal of writing on 
my part, and a great deal of reading on yours, 
to follow the King through his disputes with 
the Barons, and to follow 7 The Barons through 
their disputes with one another — so I will make 
short work of it for both of us, and only relate 
the chief events that arose out of these quarrels. 
The good King of France was asked to decide 
between them. He gave it as his opinion that 
the King must maintain the Great Charter, and 
that the Barons must give up the Committee of 
Government, and all the rest that had been done 
by the Parliament at Oxford: which the Royal- 
ists, or KiDg's party, scornfully called the Mad 
Parliament. The Barons declared that these 
were not fair terms, and they would not accept 
them. Then they caused the great bell of St. 
Paul's to be tolled, for the purpose of rousing 
up the London people, who armed themselves 
at the dismal sound, and formed quite an army 
in the streets. I am sorry to say, however, that 
instead of falling upon the King's party with 
whom their quarrel was, they fell upon the 
miserable Jews, aud killed at least five hundred 
of them. Thej- pretended I hat some of these 
-Tews were on the King's side, and that they J 
kept hidden in their houses, for the destruction 
of the people, a certain terrible composition 
called Greek Fire, which could not be put out 
with water, but only burnt the fiercer for it. 
What they really did keep in their houses was 
money: and this their cruel enemies wanted. 
and this their cruel enemies took, like robbers 
and murderers. 

The Earl of Leicester put himself at I lie head 
of these Londoners aud other forces, and fol- 
lowed the King to Lewes, in Sussex, where he 
"ay encamped with his army. Before living the 



and was no longer near him, to help him with j King's forces battle here, the Earl addressed his 
advice. The clergy, resisting the very Pope, j soldiers, aDd said that King Henry the Third 
•were in alliance with the Barons. The Barons ' had broken so many oaths, that he had become 



the enemy of God, and therefore they would 
wear white crosses on their breasts, as if they 
were arrayed, not against a fellow Christian, 
but agaiust a Turk. White-crossed, according- 
ly, they rushed into the fight. They would 
have lost the daj — the Kiug having on his side 
all the foreigners iu England; and, from Scot- 
land, John Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert 
Bruce, with all their men — but for the impa- 
tience of Prince Edward, who, in his hot desire 
to have vengeance ou the people of London, 
threw the whole of his father's army into con- 
tusion. He was taken prisoner: so was the 
King; so was the King's brother, the King of 
the Romans; and fH-e thousand Englishmen 
were left dead upon the bloody grass. 

For this success the Pope excommunicated 
the Earl of Leicester: which neither the Earl nor 
the people cared at all about. The people loved 
him aud supported him, and he became the real 
King; having all the power of the government 
in his own hands, though he was outwardly re- 
spectful to King Henry the Third, whom he 
took with him wherever he went, like a poor 
old limp court-card. He summoned a Parlia- 
ment (in the year one thousand two hundred 
and sixty-five) which was thefirst Parliament iu 
England that the people had any real share in 
elecliug; and he grew more and "more in favor 
with the people every day, and thev stood by 
him in whatever he did. 

Many of the other Barons, and particularly 
the Earl of Gloucester, who had become by this 
time as proud as his father, grew jealous of this 
powerful and popular Ear), who was proud too, 
aud began to conspire against him. Since the 
battle "Of Lewes, Prince Edward had been kept 
as a hostage, and, though he was otherwise 
treated like a Prince, had never been allowed to 
go out without attendants appointed by the Earl 
of Leicester, who watched him. The conspir- 
ing Lords touud means to propose to him, iu se- 
cret, that they should assist him to escape, and 
should make him their leader; to which he ray 
heartily consented. 

So on a day I hat was agreed upon, he said to 
his attendants after dinner (being then at Here- 
ford), ' 1 should like to ride on horseback, this 
tine afternoon, a little way into the country." 
As they, too, thought it would be very pleasant 
to have a canter in the sunshine, they all rode 
out of Ihe town together in a gay little troop. 
When they came to a fine level piece of turf, the 
Prince fell to comparing their horses one with 
another, and offering bets that one was faster 
than another; and the attendants, suspecting no 
harm, rode galloping matches until their horses 
ivere quite tired. The Prince rode no matches 
himself, but looked on from his saddle, and 
staked his money. Thus they passed the whole 
merry afternoon. Now, the sun was setting, 
aud they were all going slowly up a Mil, the 
Prince's horse very fresh, and all the other 
horses very weary, when a strange rider mount- 
ed on a gray steed appeared at the top of the 
hill, and wared his hat. " What does the fel- 
low mean?" said the attendants one to another. 
The Prince answered on the instant by setting 
spurs to his horse, dashing away at his utmost 
speed, joining the man, riding into the midst of 
a little crowd of horsemen who were then seen 
waiting under some trees, and who closed 
around him; and so he departed in a cloud of 
dust, leaving the road empty of all but the 
baffled attendants, who sat looking at one an- 
other, while their horses drooped their cars ai.d 
panted. 

The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester at 
Ludlow. The Earl of Leicester, with a part of 
the army and the stupid old King, was at Here- 
ford. One of the Earl of Leicester's sons, 
Simon de Montfort, with another part of the 
army, was in Sussex. To prevent these two 
parts from uniting was the Prince's first object. 
He attacked Simon de Montfort by night, de- 
feated him, seized his banners and treasure, and 
forced him into Kenilworth Castle, in Warwick- 
shire, which belonged to his family. 

His father, the Earl of Leicester, in the mean- 
while, not knowing what had happened, 
marched out of Hereford, with his part of the 
army and the King, to meet him. He came on 
a bright morning iu August, to Evesham, which 
is watered by the pleasant river Avon. Look- 
ther anxiously across the prospect toward 
Kenilworth, he saw his ownbanners advancing; 
and his face brightened with joy. But, it 
clouded darkly when he presently perceived that 
the banners were captured, and in the enemy's 
hands; and he said, '"It is over The Lord 
havt mercy ou our souls, for our bodies are 
Prince Edward's!" 



24 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless. | 
When his horse was killed under him, he fought j 
on foot. It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay ! 
in heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up 
in a suit of armor on a big war-horse, which 
didn't mind him at all, and which carried him 
into all sorts of places where he didn't want to 
go, got into everybody's way, and very nearly j 
got knocked on the head by one of his son's 
men. But he managed to pipe out, "I am 
Harry of Winchester!" and the Prince, who 
heard him, seized his bridle, and took him out 
of peril. The Earl of Leicester still fought 
bravely until his best son Henry was killed, and 
the bodies of his best friends choked his path ; 
and then he fell, still fighting, sword in hand. 
They mangled his body, and sent it as a present 
to a noble lady— but a very unpleasant lady, I 
should think — who was the wife of his worst 
enemy. They could not mangle his memory m 
the minds of the faithful people, though. Many 
years afterward, they loved him more than ever, 
and regarded him as a Saint, and always spoke 
of him as " Sir Simon the Righteous." 

And even though he was dead, the cause for 
which he had fought still lived, and_was strong, 
and forced itself upon the King in the very hour 
of victory. Henry found himself obliged to re- 
spect the Great Charter, however much he hated 
it, and to make laws similar to the laws of the 
Great Earl of Leicester, and to be moderate and 
forgiving toward the people at last — even toward 
the people of London, who had so long opposed 
him. There were more risings before all this 
was done, but they were set at rest by these 
means, and Prince Edward did his best in all 
things to restore peace. One Sir Adam de 
Gourdon was the last dissatisfied knight in 
arms; but, the Prince vanquished him in single 
combat, in a wood, and nobly gave him his life, 
and became his friend, instead of slaying him. 
Sir Adam was not ungrateful. He ever after- 
ward remained devoted to his generous con- 
queror. 

"When the troubles of I he Kingdom were thus 
calmed, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry 
took the Cross, and went away to the Holy 
Land, with many English Lords and Knights. 
Four years afterward the King of the Romans 
died, and, next year (one thousand two hundred 
and seventy-two), his brother, the weak King of 
England, died. He was sixty-eight years old 
then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He was as 
much of a King in death as he had ever been in 
life. He was the mere pale shadow of a King at 
all times. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FIRST, CALLED 
■ LONGSHANKS. 

It was now the year of our Lord one thousand 
two hundred and seventy-two; and Prince 
Edward, the heir to the throne, being away in 
the Holy Land, knew nothing of his father's 
death. The Barons, however" proclaimed him 
King immediately after the Royal funeral ; and 
the people very willingly consented, since most 
men knew too "well by this time what the horrors 
of a contest for a crown were. So King Edward 
the First, called, in not a very complimentary 
manner, Longshanks, because of theslenderness 
of his legs, was peacefully accepted by the En- 
glish Nation. 

His legs had need to be strong, however long 
and thin they were ; for they had to support him 
through many difficulties on the fiery sands of 
Asia, where his small force of soldiers fainted, 
died, deserted, and seemed to melt away. But 
his prowess made light of it, and he said, " I 
will go on, if I go on with no other follower than 
my groom. ' ' 

A Prince of this spirit gave the Turks a deal 
of trouble. He stormed Nazareth, at which 
place, of all places on earth, I am sorry to relate, 
he made a frightful slaughter of innocent people; 
and then he went to Acre, where he got a truce 
of ten years from the Sultan. He had very nearly 
lost his life in Acre, through the treachery of a 
Saracen Noble, called the Emir of Jaffa, who, 
making pretense that he had some idea of turn 
ing Christian, and wanted to know all about 
that religion, sent-a trusty messenger to Edward 
very often — with a dagger in his sleeve. At last, 
one Friday in Whitsua week, when it was very 
hot, and all the sandy prospect lay beneath the 
blazing sun, burnt up like a great overdone bis- 
cuit, and Edward was lying on a couch, dressed 
for coolness in only a loose robe, the messenger, 
with his chocolate-colored face and his bright 
dark eyes and white teeth, came creeping in with 



a letter, and kneeled down like a tamed tiger. 
But, the moment Edward stretched out his hand 
to take the letter, the tiger made a spring at his 
heart. He was quick, but Edward was quick 
too. He seized the traitor by his chocolate 
throat, threw him to the ground, and slew him 
with the very dagger he had drawn. The weapon 
had struck Edward in the arm, and, although 
the wound itself was slight, it threatened to be 
mortal, lor the blade of the dagger had been 
smeared with poison. Thanks, however to a 
better surgeon than was often to be found in 
those times, and to some wholesome herbs, and, 
above all, to his faithful wife, Eleanor, who de- 
votedly nursed him, and is said by some to have 
sucked the poison from the wound with her own 
red lips (which I am very willing to believe), 
Edward soon recovered, and was sound again. 

As the King his father had sent entreaties to 
him to return home, he now began the journey. 
He had got as far as Italy, when he met messen- 
gers who brought him intelligence of the King's 
death. Hearing that all was quiet at home, he 
made no haste to return to his own dominions, 
but paid a visit to the Pope, and went in state 
through various Italian towns, where he was wel- 
comed with acclamations as a mighty champion 
of the Cross from the Holy Land, and where he 
received presents of purple mantles and pranc 
ing horses, and went along in great triumph. 
The shouting people little knew that he was the 
last English monarch who would ever embark 
in a crusade, or that within twenty years every 
conquest which the Christians had made in the 
Holy Land, at the cost of so much blood, would 
be won back by the Turks. But all this came 
to pass. 

There was, and there is, an old town stand- 
ing in a plain in France, called Chalons. When 
the King was coming toward this place on his 
way to England, a wily French Lord, called the 
Count of Chalons, sent him a polite challenge to 
come with his knights and hold a fair tourna- 
ment with the Count and his knights, and make 
a day of it with sword and lance. It was rep- 
resented to the King that the Count of Chalons 
was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a holi- 
day fight for mere show and in good humor, he 
secretly meant a real battle, in whch the English 
should be defeated by superior force. 

The King, however, nothing afraid, went to 
the appointed place on the appointed day, with a 
thousand followers. When the Count came with 
two thousand, and attacked the English in ear- 
nest, the English rushed at them with such valor 
that the Count's men and the Count's horses soon 
began to be tumbled down all over the field. The 
Count himself seized the King round the neck,but 
the King tumbled him out of his saddle in return 
for the compliment, and, jumping from his own 
horse, and standing over him, beat away at his 
iron armor like a blacksmith hammering on his 
anvil. Even when the Count owned himself de- 
feated, and offered his sword, the King would 
not do him the honor to take it, but made him 
yield it up to a common soldier. There had 
been such fury shown in this fight, that it was 
afterward called the little Battle of Chalons 

The English were very well disposed to be 
proud of their King after these adventures; so, 
when he landed at Dover in the year one thou- 
sand two hundred and seventy-four (being then 
thirty-six years old), and went on to Westmin- 
ster, where he and his good Queen were crowned 
with great magnificence, splendid rejoicings took 
place. For the coronation feast there were pro- 
vided, among other eatables, four hundred oxen, 
four hundred sheep, four hundred and fifty pigs, 
eighteen wild boars, three hundred flitches of 
bacon, and twenty thousand fowls. The fount- 
ains and conduits in the street flowed with red 
and white wine instead of water; the rich citi- 
zens hung silks and cloths of the brightest colors 
out of their windows to increase the beauty of 
the show, and threw out gold and silver by 
whole handf uls to make scrambles for the crowd. 
In short, there was such eating and drinking, 
such music and capering, such a ringing of bells 
and tossing of caps, such a shouting, and singing, 
and reveling, as the narrow overhanging streets 
of old London City had not witnessed for many 
a long day. All the people were merry — except 
the poor Jews, who, trembling within their 
houses, and scarcely daring to peep out, began to 
foresee that they would have to find the money 
for this joviality sooner or later. 

To dismiss this sad subject of the Jews for 
the present, 1 am sorry to add that in this reign 
they were most unmercifully pillaged. They 
were hanged in great numbers, on accusations 
of having clipped the King's coin — which all 
kinds of people had done. They were heavily 



taxed; they were disgracefully badged; they 
were, on one day, thirteen years after the coro- 
nation, taken up with their wives and children,, 
and thrown into beastly prisons, until they pur- 
chased their release by paying to the King twelve' 
thousand pounds. Finally, every kind of prop- 
erty belonging to them was seized by the King, 
except so little as would defray the charge of 
taking themselves away into foreign countries. 
Many years elapsed before the hope of gain in- 
duced any of their race to return to England,- 
where they had been treated so heartlessly, and 
had suffered so much. 

If King Edward the First had been as bad a 
King to Christians as he was to the Jews, he 
would have been bad indeed. But he was, in 
general, a wise and great monarch, under whom 
the country much improved. He had no love 
for the Great Charter— few Kings had, through 
many, many years — but he had high qualities. 
The first bold object which he conceived, when 
he came home, was, to unite under one Sovereign 
England, Scotland, and Wales; the two last of 
which countries had each a little King of its 
own, about whom the people were always quar- 
reling and fighting, and making prodigious dis- 
turbance — a great deal more than he was worth. 
In the course of King Edward's reign he was 
engaged, besides, in a war with France. To 
make these quarrels clearer, we will separate 
their histories, and take them thus. Wales, first. 
France, second. Scotland, third. 

Llewellyn was the Prince of Wales. He had 
been on the side of the Barons in the reign of 
the stupid old King, but had afterward sworn 
allegiance to him. When King Edward came to 
the throne, Llewellyn was required to swear' 
allegiance to him also; which he refused to do. 
The King, being crowned and in his own domin- 
ions,thre'e times more requiredLlewellyn to come 
and do homage; and three times more Llewellyn 
said he would rather not. He was going to be- 
married to Eleanor de Montfort, a young lady 
of the family mentioned in the last reign; and 
it chanced that this young lady, coming from 
France with her youngest brother, Emeric, was- 
taken by an English ship, and was ordered by 
the English King to be detained. Upon this the 
quarrel came to a head. The King went, with 
his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encom- 
passing Llewellyn that he could only take refuge 
in the bleak mountain region of Snowdon, in 
which no provisions could reach him, he was 
soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty 
of peace, and into paying the expenses of the 
war. The King, however, forgave him some 
of the hardest conditions of the treaty, and con- 
sented to his marriage. And he now thought he 
had reduced Wales to obedience. 

But the Welsh, although they were naturally 
a gentle, quiet, pleasant people, who liked to re- 
ceive strangers in their cottages among the 
mountains, and to set before them with free hos- 
pitality whatever they had to eat and drink, and 
to play to them on their harps, and sing their 
native ballads to them, wore a people of great 
spirit when their blood was up. Englishmen, 
after this affair, began to be insolent in Wales, 
and to assume the air of masters; and the Welsh 
pride could not bear it. Moreover, they believed, 
in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose un- 
lucky old prophecies somebody always seemed 
doomed to remember when there was a chance 
of its doing harm; and just at this time some 
blind old gentleman with alarp and along white 
beard, who was an excellent person, but had be- 
come of an unknown age and tedious, burst out 
with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that 
when English money had become round, a 
Prince of Wales would be crowned in London. 
Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the 
English penny to be cut into halves and quarters 
for"halfpence and farthings, and had actually 
introduced a round coin; therefore the Welsh 
people said this was the time Merlin meant, and 
rose accordingly. 

King Edward had bought over Prince David, 
Llewellyn's brother.by heaping favors upon him ; 
but he was the first to revolt, being perhaps 
troubled in his conscience. One stormy night, 
he surprised the Castle of Hawarden, in posses- 
sion of which an English nobleman had been 
left, killed the whole" garrison, and carried off 
the nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon'this 
the Welsh people rose like one man. King 
Edward, with his army, marching from Worces- 
ter to theMenai Strait, crossed j.* -near to where 
the wonderful tubular iron b: iuge now, in days so 
different, makes a passage for railway trains - 
by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to. 
march abreast. He subdued the Island of An- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



25 



glesea, and sent his men forward to observe the 
enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh 
created a panic among them, and they fell back 
to the bridge. The tide had in the meantime 
risen and separated the boats; the Welsh pursu- 
ing them, they were driven into the sea, and 
there they sunk, in their heavy iron armor, by 
thousands. After this victory, Llewellyn, helped 
by the severe winter weather of Wales, gained 
another battle; but the King ordering a portion 
of his English army to advance through South 
Wales, and catch him between two foes, and 
Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new en- 
emy, he was. surprised and killed — very meanly, 
for" he was unarmed and defenseless. His head 
was struck off and sent to London, where it was 
fixed upon tire Tower, encircled with a wreath, 
some say of ivy, some say of willow , some say of 
silver, to make it look dike a ghastly coin, in 
ridicule of the prediction. 

David, however, still held out for six months, 
though eagerly sought after by the King, and 
hunted by his own countrymen. One of ihem 
finally betrayed him, with his wife and children. 
He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and 
quartered ; and from that time this became the 
established punishment of Traitors in England 
— a punishment wholly without excuse, as 
being revolting, vile, and cruel, after its object 
is dead , and which has no sense in it, as its 
only real degradation (and that nothing can blot 
out) is to the country that permits on any con- 
sideration such abominable barbarity. 

Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving 
birth to a young Prince in the Castle of Carnar- 
von, the King showed him to the Welsh people 
as their countryman, and called him Prince of 
Wales a title that has ever since been borne by 
the heir-apparent to the English throne — which 
that little Prince soon became by the death of 
his eldest brother. The King did better things 
for the Welsh than that, by improving their 
laws, and encouraging their trade. Disturb- 
ances still took place, chiefly occasioned by the 
avarice and pride of the English Lords, on 
whom Welsh lands and castles had been be- 
stowed; but they were subdued, and the coun- 
try never rose again. There is a legend that to 
Drevent the people from being incited to rebell- 
ion by the songs of their bards and harpers, 
Edward had them all put to death. Some of 
them may have fallen among other men who 
held out against the King; but this general 
slaughter is, I think, a fancy of the harpers 
themselves, who, I dare say, made a song about 
it many years afterward, and sang it by the 
Welsh firesides until it came to be believed. 

The foreign war of the reign of Edward the 
First arose in this way. The crews of two 
vessels, one a Norman ship, and the other an 
English ship, happened to go to the same place 
in their boats to fill their casks with fresh 
water. Being rough angry fellows, they began 
to quarrel, and then to tight — the English with 
their fists; the Normans with their knives — 
and, in the fight, a Norman was killed. The 
Norman crew, instead of revenging themselves 
upon those English sailors with whom they 
had quarreled (who were too strong for them, 1 1 
suspect), took to their ship again in a great 
rage, attacked the first English ship they met, 
laid hold of an unoffending merchant who hap- 
pened to be on board, and brutally hanged him 
in the rigging of their own vessel with a dog at 
his feet. This so enraged the English sailors 
that (here was no restraining them; and when- j 
ever, and wherever, English sailors met Norman ! 
sailors, they fell upon each other tooth and nail. 
The Irish and Dutch sailors took part with the 
English; the French and Genoese sailors helped 
the Normans ; and thus the greater part of the 
mariners sailing over the sea became, in their 
way. as violent and raging as the sea itself when 
it is disturbed 

King Edward's fame had been so high abroad j 
that he had been chosen to decide a difference 
between France and another foreign power, and j 
had lived upon the Continent three years. At 
first, neither he nor the French King Philip (the 
good Louis had been dead some time) interfered 
in these quarrels; but when a fleet of eighty 
English shiDS engaged and utterly defeated a 
Norman fleet of two hundred, in a pitched bat- 
tle fought round a ship at anchor, in which no 
quarter was given, the matter became too seri- 
ous to be passed over. King Edward, as Duke 
of Guienn was summoned to present himself ' 
before the . : liMtf f ranee, at Paris, and answer 
for the da • '-'by his sailor subjects. At 

first, he s of London as his repre- 

sentative brother Edmund, who 



was married to the French Queen's mother. I 
am afraid Edmund was an easy man, and al- 
lowed himself to be talked over by his charming 
relations, the French court ladies; at all events, 
he was induced to give up his brother s dukedom 
for torty days — as a mere form, the French 
King said, to satisfy his honor — and he was so 
* very much astonished, when the time was out, 
to find that the French King had no idea of giv- 
ing it up again, that I should not wonder if it 
hastened his death: which soon took place. 

King Edward was a King to win his foreign 
; dukedom back again, if it could be won by 
energy and valor. He raised a large army, re- 
nounced his allegiance as Duke of Guienne, and 
crossed the sea to carry war into Frauce. Be- 
fore any important battle was fought, however, 
a truce was agreed upon for two years; and, in 
the course of that time, the Pope effected a rec- 
i onciliation. King Edward, who was now a 
■widower, having lost his affectionate and good 
wife, Eleanor, married the French King's sister, 
'Margaret; and the Prince of Wales was con- 
I tracted to the French King's daughter Isabella. 
Out of bad things, good things sometimes 
; arise. Out of this hanging of the innocent mer- 
1 chant, and the bloodshed and strife it caused, 
' there came to be established one of the greatest 
powers that the English people now possess. 
The preparations for the war being very expen- 
sive, and King Edward greatly wanting money, 
and being very arbitrary in his ways of raising 
j it, some of the Barons began firmly to 
oppose him. Two of them, in particular, 
j Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and 
Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, were so stout 
against him, that they maintained he had no 
right to command them to head his forces in 
Guienne, and flatly refused to go there. " By 
Heaven, Sir Earl, " said the King to the Earl 
of Hereford in a great passion, "you shall 
either go or be hanged!" "By Heaven, Sir 
King!'' replied the Earl, " 1 will neither go, nor 
jyetwill Ibehanged!" and both he and the other 
I Earl sturdily left the court, attended by many 
Lords. The King tried every means of raising 
money. He taxed the clergy, in spite of all the 
Pope said to the contrary; and, when they re- 
fused to pay, reduced them to submission by 
' saying, Very well, then they had no claim upon 
the government for protection, and any man 
might plunder them whp-^ould — which a good 
many men were very rl":.dy to do, and very 
readily did, and which the clergy found too los- 
ing a game to be played at long. He seized all 
the wool and leather in the hands of the mer- 
chants, promising to pay for it some fine day; 
and he set a tax upon the exportation of, wool, 
which was so unpopular among the traders that 
it was called " The evil toll." But all would 
not do. The Barons, led by those two great 
Earls, declared any taxes imposed without the 
consent of Parliament unlawful ; and the Parlia- 
ment refused to impose taxes until the King 
should confirm afresh the two Great Charters, 
and should solemnly declare, in writing, that 
there was no power in the country to raise money 
from the people, evermore, but the power of 
Parliament, representing all ranks of the people. 
The King was very unwilling to diminish his 
own power by allowing this great privilege in 
the Parliament; but there was no help for it, 
and he at last complied. We shall come to 
another King, by and by, who might have saved 
his head from rolling off, if he had profited by 
this example. 

The people gained other benefits in Parlia- 
ment from the good sense and wisdom of this 
King. Many of the laws were much improved ; 
provision was made for the greater safety of 
travelers, and the apprehension of thieveaiand 
murderers; the priests were prevented from 
holding too much land, and so becoming too 
powerful; and Justices of the Peace were first 
appointed (though not at first under that name) 
in various parts of the country. 

And now we come to Scotland, which was the 
great and lasting trouble of the reign of King 
Edward the First 

About thirteen years after King Edward's 
coronation. Alexander the Third, the King of 
Scotland, died of a fall from his horse. He had 
been married to Margaret, King Edward's sis- 
ter. All their children being dead, the Scottish 
crown became the right of a young Princess 
only eight years old, the daughter of Eric, King 
of Norway, who had married a daughter of the 
deceased sovereign. King Edward proposed 
that the Maiden of Norway, as this Princess 
was called, should be engaged to be married to 
Ms eldest son; but unfortunately, as she was 



coining over to England she fell sick, and, land- 
ing on one of the Orkney Islands, died there. A. 
great commotion immediately began in Scot- 
land, where as many as thirteen noisy claimants 
to the vacant throne started up and made a gen- 
eral confusion. 

King Edward being" much renowned for his 
sagacity and justice, it seems to have been agreed 
to refer the dispute to him He accepted the 
trust, and went, with an army, to the Border- 
land where England and ' Scotland joined. 
There, he called upon the Scottish gentlemen to 
meet him at the Castle of ,N° r li am » on the En- 
glish side of the river Tweed; and to that castle 
they came. But, before he would take any step 
in the business, he required those Scottish gen- 
tlemen, one and all, to do homage to him as 
their superior Lord ; and, when they hesitated, 
he said, " By holy Edward, whose crown I 
wear, I will have my rights, or I will die in 
maintaining them!" The Scottish gentlemen, 
who had not expected this, were disconcerted, 
and asked for three weeks to think about it. 

At the end of the three weeks another meet- 
ing took place, on a green plain on the Scottish 
side of the river. Of all the competitors for the 
Scottish throne, there were only two who had 
any real claim, in right of their near kindred to 
the Royal family. These were John Baliol and 
Robert Bruce; and the right was, I have no 
doubt, on the side of John Baliol. At this par- 
ticular meeting John Baliol was not present, 
but Robert Bruce was; and, on Robert Bruce 
being formally asked whether he acknowledged 
the King of England for his superior lord, he 
answered, plainly and distinctly, Yes, he did. 
Next day, John Baliol appeared, and said the 
same. This point settled, some arrangements 
were made for inquiring into their titles. 

The inquiry occupied a pretty long time — 
more than a j ear. While it was going on, King 
Edward took the opportunity of making a jour- 
ney through Scotland, and calling upon the 
Scottish people of all degrees to acknowledge 
themselves his vassals, or be imprisoned until 
they did. In the meanwhile, Commissioners 
were appointed to conduct the inquiry, a Parlia- 
ment was held at Berwick about it, the two 
claimants were heard at full length, and there 
was a vasl^ amount of talking. At last, in the 
great hall of the Castle of Berwick, the King 
gave judgment in favor of John Baliol : who, 
consenting to receive his crown by the King of 
England's favor and permission, was crowned 
at Scone, in an old stone chair which bad been 
used for ages in the abbey there, at the corona- 
tions of Scottish Kings. Then, King Edward 
caused the great seal of Scotland, used since the 
late King's death, to be broken in four pieces, 
and placed in the English Treasury; and con- 
sidered that he now had Scotland (according to 
the common saying) under his thumb. 

Scotland had a strong will of its own yet, 
however. King Edward, determined that the 
Scottish King should not forget he was his vas- 
sal, summoned him repeatedly to come and de- 
fend himself and his Judges before the English 
Parliament when appeals from the decisions of 
Scottish courts of justice were being heard. At 
length, John Baliol. who had no great heart of 
his own, had so much heart put into him by the 
brave spirit of the Scottish people who took this 
as a national insult, that he refused to come any 
more. Thereupon, the King further required 
him to help him in his war abroad (which was 
then in progress), and to give up, as security for 
his good behavior in future, the three strong 
Scottish Castles of Jedburgh, Roxburgh, and 
Berwick. Nothing of this being clone; on the 
contrary, the Scottish people concealing their 
King among their mountains in the Highlands, 
and showing a determination to resist ; Edward 
marched to Berwick with an army of thirty 
thousand foot, and four thousand horse; took 
the castle, and slew its whole garrison, and the 
inhabitants of the town as well — men, women, 
and children. Lord Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, 
then went on to the Castle of Dunbar, before 
which a battle was fought, and the whole Scot- 
tish army defeated with great slaughter. The 
victory being complete, the Earl of Surrey was 
left as guardian of Scotland; the principal 
otfices in that kingdom were given to English- 
men; the more powerful Scottish 'Nobles were 
obliged to come and live in England; the Scot- 
tish crown and scepter were brought away; and 
ev< n the old fctone chair was carried off and 
placed in Westminster Abbey, where you may 
see it now. Balial had the Tower of London 
lent him for a residence, with permission to 
range about within a circle of twenty miles. 
Three years af terward%e was allowed to go to 



26 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



Normandy, where lie had estates, and where he 
passed the remaining six years of his life: far 
more happily, I dare say, than he had lived for 
a long while in angry Scotland. 

Now, there was, in the West of Scotland, a 
gentleman of small fortune, named William 
Wallace, the second son of a Scottish knight. 
lie was a man of great size and great strength; 
he was very brave and daring; when he spoke 
to a body of his countrymen, he could rouse 
them in a wonde'rful manner by the power of 
his burning words; he loved Scotland dearly, 
and he hated England with his utmost might. 
The domineering conduct of the English who 
now held the places of trust in Scotland made 
them as intolerable to the proud Scottish people 
as they had been, under similar circumstances, 
to the Welsh; and no man in all Scotland re- 
garded them with so much smothered rage as 
William Wallace. One day, an Englishman in 
office, little knowing what he was, affronted him. 
Wallace instantly struck him dead, and taking 
refuge among the rocks and hills, and there 
joining with his countryman Sir William Doug- 
las, who was also in arms against King Edward, 
became the most resolute and undaunted cham- 
pion of a people struggling for their independ- 
ence that ever lived upon the earth. 

The English Guardian of the Kingdom fled 
before him, and, thus encouraged, the Scottish 
people revolted everywhere, and fell upon the 
English without mercy. The Earl of Surrey, 
by the King's commands, raised all the power 
of the Border- counties, and two English armies 
poured into Scotland. Only one Chief, in the 
face of those armies, stood by Wallace,, who, 
with a force of forty thousand men, awaited the 
invaders at a place on the river Forth, within 
two miles of Stirling. Across the river there 
was only one poor wooden bridge, called the 
bridge of' Kildean — so narrow that but two men 
could crgss it abreast. With his eyes upon this 
bridge, Wallace posted the greater part of his men 
among some rising grounds, and waited calmly. 
When the English army came up on the op 
posit* bank of the river, messengers were sent 
forward to offer terms. Wallace sent them back 
with a defiance, in the name of the freedom of 
Scotland. Some of the officers of the Earl of 
Surrey in command of the English, with their 
eyes also on the bridge, advised him to be dis- 
creet, and not hasty. He, however, urged to 
immediate battle by some- other officers, and 
particularly by Cressingham, King Edward's 
treasurer, and a rash man, gave the word of 
command to advance. One thousand English 
crossed the bridge, two abreast; the Scottish 
troops were as motionless as stone images. Two 
thousand English crossed; three thousand, four 
thousand, five. Not a feather, all this time, had 
been seen to stir among the Scottish bonnets. 
Now they fluttered. " Forward, one party, to 
the foot of the Bridge!" cried Wallace, "and 
let no more English cross! The rest, down with 
me on the five thousand who have come over, 
and cut them all to pieces!" It was done; in the 
sight of the whole remainder of the English 
army, who could give no help. Cressingham 
himself was killed, and the Scotch made whips 
for their horses of his skin. 

King Edward v#as abroad at this time, and 
during the successes on the Scottish side which 
followed, and which enabled bold Wallace to 
win the whole country back again, and even to 
ravage the English borders. But, after a few 
winter months, the King returned, and took the 
field with more than his usual energy. One 
night, when a kick from his horse, as they both 
lay on the ground together, broke two of his 
ribs, and a cry arose that he was killed, he 
leaped into his saddle, regardless of the pain he 
suffered, and rode through the camp Day then 
appearing, he gave the word (still, of course, in 
that bruised and aching state) Forward ! and led 
his army on to near Falkirk, where the Scottish 
forces were seen drawn up on some stony 
ground, behind a morass. Here he defeated 
Wallace, and killed fifteen thousand of his men. 
With the shattered remainder, Wallace . drew 
back to Stirling; but, being pursued, set fire to 
the town, that it might give no help to the En- 
glish, and escaped. The inhabitants of Perth 
afterward set fire to their houses for the same 
reason, and the King, unable to find provisions, 
was forced to withdraw his army. 

Another Robert Bruce, the grandson of him 
who had disputed the Scottish cfcwn with Bal- 
iol, was now in arms against the King (that 
elder Bruce being dead), andjalso John Comyn, 
Baliol's nephew. These two young men might 
agree in opposing Edward, but could agree in 
nothing else, as they were rivals for the throne 



of Scotland. Probably it was because they 
knew this, and knew what troubles must arise 
even if they could hope to get the better of the 
great English King, that the principal Scottish 
people applied to the Pope for his interference. 
The Pope, on the principle of losing nothing for 
want of trying to get it, very coolly claimed 
that Scotland belonged to him; but this was a 
little too much, and" the Parliament in a friendly 
manner told him so. 

In the spring-time of the year one thousand 
three hundred and three, the King sent Sir John 
Segrave, whom he made Governor of Scotland, j 
with twenty thousand men, to reduce the rebels. 
Sir John was not as careful as he should have 
been, but encamped at Rosslyn, near Edin- 
burgh, with his army divided into three parts. ! 
The Scottish forces saw their advantage; fell, 
on each part separately; defeated each; and 
killed all the prisoners. Then, came the King ' 
himself once more, as soon as a great army 
could be raised; he passed through the whole 
north of Scotland, laying waste whatsoever i 
came in his way; and he took up his winter 
quarters at Dunfermline. The Scottish cause 
now looked so hopeless, that Comyn and the 
other nobles made submission, and received their 
pardons. Wallace alone stood out. He was 
invited to surrender, though on no distinct 
pledge that his life should be spared; but he still 
defied the ireful King, and lived among the 
steep crags of the Highland glens, where the 
eagles made their nests, and where the mountain 
torrents roared, and the white snow was deep, 
and the bitter winds blew round his unsheltered 
head, as he lay through many a pitch-dark night 
wrapped up in "his plaid. Nothing could 
break his spirit; nothing could lower his 
courage; nothing could induce him to forget 
or to forgive his country's wrongs. Even when 
the Castle of Stirling, which had long held out, 
was besieged by the King with every kind of 
military engine then in use; even when the lead 
upon cathedral roofs was taken down to help to 
make them; even when the King, though an old 
man, commanded in the siege as if he were a 
youth, being so resolved to conquer; even when 
the brave garrison (then found with amazement 
to be not two hundred people, including sev- 
eral ladies) were starved and beaten out, and 
were made to submit on their knees, and with 
every form of disfisce that could, aggravate 
their sufferings; ev'fcj'then, when there was not 
a ray of hope in Scotland, William Wallace was 
as proud and firm as if he had beheld the power- 
ful and relentless Edward lying dead at his feet. 
Who betrayed William Wallace in the end is 
not quite certain. That he was betrayed — 
probably by an attendant — is top true. He was 
taken to the Castle of Dumbarton, under Sir 
John Monteith, and thence to London, where 
the great fame of his bravery and resolution at- 
tracted immense concourses of people to behold 
him. He was tried in Westminster Hall, with 

\ a crown of laurel on his head — it is supposed 
because he was reported to have said that he 

1 ought to wear, or that he would wear, a crown 
there — and was found guilty as a robber, a 
murderer, and a traitor. What they called a 

I robber (he said to those 'who tried him) he was, 
because he had taken spoil from the King's 
men. What they called a murderer he was, be- 
cause he had slain an insolent Englishman. 
What they called a traitor he was 'not, for he 
had never sworn allegiance to the King, and 
had ever scorned to do it. He was dragged at 
the tails of horses to West Smithfield, and there 
hanged on a high gallows, torn open before he 
was dead, beheaded, and quartered. His head 
was set upon a pole on London Bridge, his right 
an* was sent to Newcastle, his left arm to Ber- 
wick, his legs to Perth and Aberdeen. But, if 
King Edward had had his body cut into inches, 
and had sent every separate inch into a separate 
town, he could not have dispersed it half so far 
and wide as his fame. Wallace will be remem- 
bered in songs and stories, while there are songs 
and stories in the English tongue, and Scotland 
will hold him dear while her lakes and mount- 

' ains last. 

Released from this dreadful enemy, the King 
made a fairer plan of Government for Scotland, 
divided the offices of honor among Scottish gen- 
tlemen and English gentlemen, forgave past 
offenses, and thought, in his old age, that his 
work was done. 

But he deceived himself. Comyn and Bruce 
conspired, and made an appointment to meet at 
Dumfries, in the church of the Minorites. 
There is a story that Comyn was false to Bruce, 
and trad informed against him to the King; that 
Bruce was warned of his danger, and the neces- 



sity of flight, by receiving one night as he sat at. 
supper, from his friend the Earl of Gloucester,, 
twelve pennies and a pair of spurs ; that as he 
was riding angrily to keep his appointment 
(through a snow-storm, with his horse's shoes 
reversed, that he might not be tracked), he met 
an evil-looking Serving-man, a messenger of 
Comyn, whom he killed, and. concealed in 
whose dress he found letters that proved 
Comyn's treachery. However this may be, they 
were likely enough to quarrel in "any case, 
being hot-headed rivals; and, whatever they 
quarreled about, they certainly did quarrel in 
the church, where they met, and Bruce drew 
his dagger and stabbed Comyn, who fell upon 
the pavement. When Bruce came out, pale and 
disturbed, the friends who were waiting for 
him asked what was the matter? " I think I 
have killed Comyn," said he. " You only 
thinkso?" returned one of them; "Iwillmake 
sure!" and going into the church, and finding 
him alive, stabbed him again and again. Know- 
ing that the King would never forgive this new 
deed of violence, the party then declared Bruce 
King of Scotland; got him crowned at Scone - 
without the chair; and set up the rebellious- 
standard once again. 

When the King heard of it he kindled with 
fiercer anger than he had ever shown yet. He 
caused the Prince of Wales and twe hundred 
and seventy of the young nobility to be knighted 
— the trees in the Temple Gardens were cut 
down to make room for their tents, and they 
watched their armor all night, according to the 
old usage: some in the Temple Church; some in 
Westminster Abbey — and at the public Feast 
which then took place, he swore by Heaven, and 
by two swans covered with gold network which 
his minstrels placed upon the table, that he 
would avenge the death of Comyn, and would 
punish the false Bruce. And before all the com- 
pany, he charged the Prince his son, in case' 
that he should die before accomplishing his 
vow, not to bury him until- it was fulfilled. 
Next morning the Prince and the rest of the- 
young Knights rode away to the Border coun- 
try to join the Eglish army; and the King, now 
weak and sick, followed in a horse-litter. 

Bruce, after losing a battle and undergoing 
many dangers and much misery, fled to Ire- 
land, where he lay concealed through the win- 
ter. That winter Edward passed in hunting 
down and executing Bruce's relations and ad- 
herents, sparing neither youth nor age, and 
showing no touch of pity or sign of mercy. In 
the following spring Bruce reappeared, and 
gained some victories. In these frays both 
sides were grievously cruel. For instance — 
Bruce's two brothers, being taken captives des- 
perately wounded, were ordered by the King to- 
instant execution. Bruce's friend.*Sir John 
Douglas, taking his own Castle of Douglas out. 
of the hands of an English Lord, roasted the 
dead bodies of the slaughtered garrison in a 
great fire made of every' movable within it; 
which dreadful cookery his men called " the 
Douglas Larder. Bruce, still successful, how- 
ever, drove the Earl of Pembroke and tiie Earl 
of Gloucester into the Castle of Ayr, and laid 
siege to it. 

The King who had been laid up all winter, 
but had directed the army from his sick bed, 
now advanced to Carlisle, and there, causing 
the litter in which he had traveled to be placed 
in the Cathedral as an offering to Heaven, 
mounted his horse once more, and for the last 
time. He was now sixty-nine years old, and 
had reigned thirty-five years. He was so ill, 
that in four days he could go no'more than six 
miles; still, even at that pace, he went on, and 
resolutely kept his face toward the Border. A.t 
length, he lay down at the village of Burgh - 
upon-Sands; and there, telling those around 
him to impress upon the Prince that he was to 
remember his father's vow, and was never to- 
| rest until he had thoroughly subdued Scotland, 
he yielded up his last breath. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ENGLAND UNDER KING EDWARD THE, SECOND. 

King Edward the Second, the first Prince 
of Wales, was twenty-three years old when his 
father died. There was a certain favorite of his, 
a young man from Gascony, named Piers 
Gaveston, of whom his father had so much dis 
approved that he had ordered him out of Eng 
land, and had made his son ,,,r . by the side- 
of his sick bed, never to b i % But. 

the Prince no sooner foun 1 g than: 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAKD. 



27 



he broke his oatb, as so many other Princes and 
Kings did (they were far too ready to take 
oaths), and sent for his dear friend immediately. 
Now, this same Gaveston was handsome 
enouah, but was a reckless, insolent, audacious 
fellow. He was detested by the proud English 
Lords: not only because he had such power 
over the King, and made the court such a dis- 
sipated place, but also because he could ride 
better than they at tournaments, and was used, 
in his impudence, to cut veiy bad jokes on 
them; calling one the old hog; another, the 
stage-player; another, the Jew; another, the 
black dog of Ardenne. This was as poor wit as 
need be, but it made those Lords very wroth; 
aud the surly Earl of Warwick, who was the 
black dog, swore that the time should come 
when Piers Gaveston should feel the black dog's 
teeth. 

It was not come yet, however, nor did it seem 
to be coming. The King made him Earl of 
Cornwall, and gave him vast riches; and, when 
the King went over to France to marry the 
French Princess, Isabella, daughter of Philip le 
Bel: who was said to be the most beautiful 
woman in the world : he made Gaveston Regent 
of the Kingdom. His splendid marriage cere- 
mony in the Church of uur Lady at Boulogne, 
where there were four Kings and three Queens 
present (quite a pack of Court Cards, for I dare 
say the Knaves were not wanting), being over, 
he seemed to care little or nothing for his beau- 
tiful wife; but was wild with impatience to 
meet Gaveston. again. 

When he landed at home, he paid no atten- 
tion to anybody else, but ran info the favorite's 
arms before a great concourse of people, and 
hugged him, and kissed him, and called him 
his brother. At the coronation which soon fol- 
lowed, Gaveston was the richest and brightest 
of all the glittering company there, aud had the 
honor of carrying the crown. This made the 
proud Lords fiercer than ever; the people, too, 
despised the favorite, and would never call him 
Earl of Cornwall, however much he complained 
to the King, and asked him to punish them for 
not doing so, but persisted in styling him plain 
Piers Gaveston. 

The Barons were so unceremonious with the 
King in giving him to understand that they 
would not bear this favorite, that the King was 
obliged to send him out of the country. The 
favorite himself was made to take an oath (more 
oaths!) that he would never come back, and the 
Barons supposed him to be banished in dis- 
grace, until thej r heard that he was appointed 
Governor of Ireland. Even this was not enough 
for the besotted King, who brought him home 
again in a year's time, and not only disgusted 
the court and the people by his doting folly, but 
offended his beautiful wife too, who never liked 
him afterward. . 

He had now the old Royal want — of money — 
and the Barons had the new power of positively 
refusing to let him raise any. He summoned a 
Parliament at York; the Barons refused to make 
one while the favorite was near him. He sum- 
moned another Parliament at Westminster, and 
sent Gaveston away. Then, the Barons came, 
completely armed, and appointed a committee 
of themselves to correct abuses in the state and 
in the King's household. He got some money 
on these conditions, and directly set off with 
Gaveston to the Border-country, where they 
spent it in idling away the time, and feasting, 
while Bruce made ready to drive the English 
out of Scotland. For, though the old King had 
even made this poor weak son of his swear (as 
some say) that he would not bury his bones, but 
would have them boiled clean in a cauldron, 
and carried before the English army until Scot- 
land was entirely subdued, the second Edward 
was so unlike the first that Bruce gained 
strength and power every day. 

The Committee of Nobles, after some months 
of deliberation, ordained that the King should 
henceforth call a Parliament together once 
every year, and even twice if necessary, instead 
of summoning it only when he chose. Further, 
that Gaveston should once more be banished, 
and, this time, on pain of death if he ever came 
back. The King's tears were of no avail ; he was 
obliged tu ^nd his favorite to Flanders. As 
soon as 1 '-ne so. however, he dissolved 

the Parli the low cunning of a mere 

fool, and - "orth of England, think- 

ing to g lout him to oppose the 

Nobles. in he 'brought Gaveston 

home, ai him all the riches and 

titles of ns had deprived him. 

The L . that there was nothing 

for it bi lvorite to death. They 



could have done so legally, according to the 
terms of his banishment; but they did so, 1 am 
sorry to say, in a shabby manner. Led by the 
Earl of Lancaster, the King's cousin, they first 
of all attacked the King and Gaveston at "New- 
castle. They had time to escape by sea, and the 
mean King, having his precious Gaveston with 
him, was quite content to leave his lovely wife 
behind. When they were comparatively safe, 
they separated ; the King went to York to collect 
a force of soldiers; and the favorite shut him- 
self up, in the meantime, in Scarborough Cas- 
tle, overlooking the sea. This was what the 
Barons wanted. They knew that the castle 
could not hold out; they attacked it, and made 
Gaveston surrender. He delivered himself up 
to the Earl of Pembroke — that Lord whom he 
had called the Jew — on the Earl's pledging his 
faith and knightly word that no harm should 
happen to him, and no violence be done him 

Now, it was agreed with Gaveston that he 
should be taken to the Castle of Wallingford, 
and there kept in honorable custody. They 
traveled as far as Dedington, near Banbury, 
where, in the castle of that place, they stopped 
for a night to rest. Whether the Earl of Pem- 
broke left his prisoner there, knowing what 
would happen, or really left him thinking no 
harm, and only going (as he pretended) to visit 
his wife, the Countess, who was in the neigh- 
borhood, is no great matter now; in any case, 
he was bound as an honorable gentleman to 
protect his prisoner, and he did not do it. In 
the morning, while the favorite was yet in bed, 
he was required to dress himself and come 
down into the courtyard. He did so without 
any mistrust, but started and turned pale when 
he found it full of strange armed men. "'1 
think you know me? ' said their leader, also 
armed from head to foot. " I am the black dog 
of Ardenne!" 

The time was come when Piers Gaveston was 
to feel the black dog's teeth indeed. They set 
him on a mule, and carried him, in mock state 
and with military music, to the black dog's 
kennel — Warwick Castle — where a hasty coun- 
cil, composed of some great noblemen, consid- 
ered what should be done with him. Some were 
for sparing him, but one loud voice — it was the 
black dog's bark, 1 dare say — sounded through 
the Castle Hall, uttering these words: " You 
have the fox in your power. Let him go now, 
and you must hunt him again." 

They sentenced him to death. He threw him- 
self at the feet of the Earl of Lancaster — the 
old hog — but the old hog was as savage as the 
dog. He was taken out upon the pleasant road 
leading from Warwick to Coventry, where the 
beautiful river Avon, by which, long afterward, 
William Shakespeare was born, and now lies 
buried, sparkled in the bright landscape of the 
beautiful May day ; and there they struck off 
his wretched head, and stained the dust with his 
blood. 

When the King heard of this black deed, in 
his grief and rage he denounced relentless war 
against his Barons, and both sides were in arms 
for half a year. But, it then became necessary 
for them to join their forces against Bruce, who 
had used the time well while they were divided, 
and had now a great power in Scotland. 

Intelligence was brought that Bruce was then 
besieging Stirling Castle, and that the Governor 
had been obliged to pledge himself to surrender 
it, unless he should be relieved before a certain 
day. Hereupon the King ordered the nobles and 
their fighting-men to meet himat Berwick; but, 
the nobles cared so little for the King, and so ! 
neglected the summons, and lost time, that only 
on the day before that appointed for the surren- ! 
der did the King find himself at Stirling, and ; 
even then with a smaller force than he had ex- j 
pected. However, he had, altogether, a hun- 
dred thousand men, and Bruce" had not more 
than forty thousand; but, Bruce's army was 
strongly posted in three square columns, on the 
ground lying between the Burn or Brook of 
Bannock and the walls of Stirling Castle. 

On the very evening when the King came up, 
Bruce did a brave act that encouraged his men. 
He was seen by a certain Henry de Bohun, an 
EnsrlMi Knight, riding about before his army i 
on M. li! tie horse, with a light battle-as in his 
hand, and a crown of gold on his head. This | 
English Knight, who was mounted on a strong 
war-horse, cased in steel, strongly armed, and I 
able (as he thought) to overthrow Bruce by I 
crushing him with his mere weight, set spurs to 
his great charger, rode on him, and made a 1 
thrust at him with his heavy spear. Bruce 
parried the thrust, and with one blow of his 
battle-ax split his skull. 



The Scottish men did not forget this next day 
when the battle raged. Randolph, Bruce's 
valiant nephew, rode, with the small body of men 
he commanded, into such a host of the English, 
all shining in polished armor in the sunlight, 
that they seemed to he swallowed up and lost, 
as if they had plunged into the sea. But. they 
fought so well, and did such dreadful execution, 
that the English staggered. Then came Bruce 
himself upon them, with all the rest of his army. 
While they were thus hard pressed and amazed, 
there appeared upon the hills what they sup- 
posed to be a new Scottish army, but 
really only the camp followers, innul 
thousand; whom Bruce had taugl 
themselves at that place and time. 
Gloucester, commanding the Engl 
made a last rush to change the fortu 
day; but Bruce (like Jack the Giant 
the story) hael had pits dug in the ground, and 
covered over with turfs and stakes. Into these, 
as they gave way beneath the weight of the 
horses, riders and horses rolled by hundreds. 
The English were completely routed, all their 
treasure, stores, and engines were taken by the 
Scottish men; so many wagons and other 
wheeled vehicles were seized, that it is related 
that they would have reached, if they had been 
drawn out in a line, one hundred and eighty 
miles. The fortunes of Scotland were, for the 
time, completely changed ; and never was a bat- 
tle won more famous upon Scottish ground 
than this great battle of Bannockburn. 

Plague and famine succeeded in England ; and 
still the powerless King and his disdainful Lords 
were always in contention. Some of the turbu- 
lent chiefs of Ireland made proposals to Bruce 
to accept the rule of that country. He sent his 
brother Edward to them, who was crowned 
King of Ireland. He afterward went himself 
to help his brother in his Irish wars, but his 
brother was defeated in the end, and killed. 
Robert Bruce, returning to Scotland, still in- 
creased his strength there. 

As the King's ruin had begun in a favorite, so 
it seemed likly to end in one. He was too poor 
a creature to rely at all upon himself ; aud his 
new favorite was one Hugh le Despenser, the 
son of a gentleman of ancient family. Hugh 
was handsome aud brave, but he was the favor- 
ite of a weak King, whom no man cared a rush 
for, and that was a dangerous piace to hold. 
The Nobles leagued against him, because the 
King liked him; and they lay in wait, both for 
his ruin and his father's. Now, the King had 
married him to the daughter of the late Earl of 
Gloucester, and had given both him and his fa- 
ther great possessions in Wales. In their en- 
deavors to extend these, they gave violenl offense 
to an angry Welsh gentleman, named John de 
Mowbray, and to divers other angry Welsh 
gentlemen, who resorted to arms, took their 
castles and seized their estates. The Earl of 
Lancaster had first placed the favorite (who was 
a poor relation of his own) at court, and he con- 
sidered his own dignity offended by the prefer- 
ence he received, and the honors he acquired; 
so he, and the Barons who were his friends, 
joined the Welshmen, marched on London, and 
sent a message to the King demanding to have 
the favorite and his father banished. At first, 
the King unaccountably took it into his head to 
be spirited, and to send them a bold reply; but 
when they quartered themselves around Hol- 
born and Clerkenwell, and went down, armed, 
to the Parliament at Westminster, he gave way, 
and complied with their demands. 

His turn of triumph came sooner than he ex- 
pected. It arose out of an accidental circum- 
stance. The beautiful Queen, happening to be 
traveling, came one night to one of the Royal 
castles, and demanded to be lodged and enter- 
tained there until morning. The governor of 
this castle, who was one of the enraged lords, 
was away, and, in his absence, his wife refused 
admission to the Queen; a scuffle took place 
among the common men on either side, and 
some of the Royal attendants were killed. The 
people, who cared nothing for the King, were 
very angry that their beautiful Queen should be 
thus rudely treated in her own dominions ; and 
the King, taking advantage of this feeling, be- 
sieged the castle, took it, and then called the 
two Despensers home. Upon this, the confeder- 
ate lords and the Welshmen went over to Bruce. 
The King encountered them at" Boroughbridge, 
gained the victory, and took a number of dis- 
tinguished prisoners; among them, the Earl of 
Lancaster, now an old man, upon whose de- 
struction he was resolved. This Earl was taken 
to his own Castle of Pontefract, and there tried 
and found guilty by an unfair court appointed 



28 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



for the purpose; he was not even allowed to 
speak in his own defense. He was insulted, 
pelted, mounted on a starved pony without sad- 
dle or bridle, carried out, and beheaded. Eight- 
and-twenty knights were hanged, drawn, and 
quartered. . When the King had dispatched this 
bloody work, and had made a fresh and a long 
truce with Bruce, he took the Despensers into 
greater favor than ever, and made the father 
Ear! of TV ster. 

, and an important one, who was 
ughbridge, made his escape, how- 
. rued the tide against the King. 
,oger Mortimer, always resolutely I 
t him, who was sentenced to d_eath, i 
[ for safe custody in the Tower of | 
mdon. He treated his guards to a quantity of 
wine into which he had put a sleeping potion ; 
and, when they were insensible, broke out of 
his dungeon, got into a kitchen, climbed up the 
chimney, let himself down from the roof of the 
building with a rope ladder, passed the sentries, 
got down to the river, and made away in a boat 
to where servants and horses were waiting for j 
him. He finally escaped to Prance, where 
Charles le Bel, the brother of the beautiful 
Queen, was King. Charles sought to quarrel 
with the King of England on pretense of his 
not bavin g come to do him homagg at his coro- 
nation. It was proposed that the beautiful 
Queen should go over to arrange the dispute. 
She went, and wrote home to the King that, as 
he was sick and could not come to France him- '• 
self, perhaps it would be better to send over the 
young Prince, their son, who was only twelve j 
years old, who could do homage to her brother j 
in his stead, and in whose company she would 
immediately return. The King sent him: but j 
both he and the Queen remained at the French ; 
court, and Roger Mortimer became the Queen's : 



lover. 



"When the King wrote again and again to the 
Queen to come home, she did not reply that she 
despised him too much to live with him any 
' more (which was the truth), but said she was 
afraid of the two Despensers. In short, her de- 
sign was to overthrow the favorites' power, and 
the King's power, such as it was, and invade 
England. Having obtained a French force of 
two thousand men, and being joined by all the 
English exiles then in France, she landed, with- 
in a year, at Orewell, in Suffolk, where she was 
immediately joined by the Earls of Kent and 
Norfolk, the King's two brothers; by other j 
powerful noblemen; and lastly, by the first En- 
glish general who was dispatched to check her; 
who went over to her with all his men. The 
people of London, receiving these tidings, 
would do nothing for the King, hut broke open 
the Tower, let out all his prisoners, and threw 
up their caps and hurrahed for the beautiful 
Queen. 

The King, with his two favorites, fled to Bris- 
tol, where he left old Despenser in charge of the 
town and castle, while he went on with the son 
to Wales. The Bristol men being opposed to , 
the King, and it being impossible to hold the 
town with enemies everywhere within the walls, | 
Despenser yielded it up on the third day, and was 
instantly brought to trial for having traitorously 
influenced what was called " the King's mind" 
—though I doubt if the King ever had any. He 
was a venerable old man, upward of ninety 
years of age, but his age gained no respect or 
mercy. He was hanged, torn open while he was 
yet alive, cut up into pieces, and thrown to the 
dogs. His son was soon taken, tried at Hereford 
before the same judge on a long series of foolish 
charges, found guilty, and hanged upon a gal- 
lows fifty feet high, with a chaplet of nettles 
round his head. His poor old father and he 
were innocent enough of any worse crimes than 
the crime of having been friends of a King, on 
whom, as a mere man, they would never have 
deigned to cast a favorable look. It is a bad 
crime, I know, and leads to worse ; but, many 
lords and gentlemen — 1 even think some ladies, 
too, if I recollect right — have committed it in 
England, who have neither been given to the 
dogs, nor hanged up fifty feet high. 

The wretched King was running here and 
there all this time, and never getting anywhere 
in particular, until he gave himself up, and was 
taken off to Kenilworth Castle. When he was 
safely lodged there, the Queen went to London, 
and met the Parliament. And the Bishop of 
Hereford, who was the most skillful of her 
friends, said, What was to be done now? Here 
was an imbecile, indolent, miserable King upon 
the throne; wouldn't it be better to take him 
off, and put his son there instead? I don't 
know whether the Queen really pitied him at 



this pass, but she began to cry ; so, the Bishop 
said. Well, my Lords and Gentlemen, what do 
you think, upon the whole, of sending down to 
Kenilworth, and seeing if his Majesty (God 
bless him, and forbid we should depose him!) 
won't resign? 

My Lords and Gentlemen thought it a good 
notion, so a deputation of them went down to 
Kenilworth; and there the King came into the 
great hall of the castle, commonly dressed in a 
poor black gown ; and, when he saw a certain 
bishop among them, fell down, poor feeble- 
headed man, and made a wretched spectacle of 
himself. Somebody lifted him up, and then 
Sir William Trussel, the Speaker of the House 
of Commons, almost frightened him to death by 
making him a tremendous speech to the effect 
that he was no longer a King, and that every- 
body renounced allegiance to him. After which 
Sir Thomas Blount, the Steward of the House- 
hold, nearly finished him by coming forward 
and breaking his white wand — which was a 
ceremony only performed at a King's death. 
Being asked in this pressing manner what he 
thought of resigning, the King said he thought 
it was the best thing he could do. So, he did it, 
and they proclaimed his son next day. 

I wish I could close his history by saying that 
he lived a harmless life in the castle and the castle 
gardens at Kenilworth, many years — that he had 
a favorite, and plenty to eat and drink — and, hav- 
ing that, wanted nothing. But he was shamefully 
humiliated. He was outraged, and slighted, and 
had dirty water from ditches given him to shave 
with, and wept and said he would have clean 
warm water, and was altogether very miserable. 
He was moved from this castle to that castle, and 
from that castle to the other castle, because this 
lord or that lord, or the other lord was too kind 
to him : until at fast he came to Berkeley Castle, 
near the river Severn, where (the Lord Berkeley 
being then ill and absent) he fell into the hands 
of two black ruffians, called Thomas Gournay 
and William Ogle. 

One night— it was the night of September the 
twenty-first, one thousand three hundred and 
twenty-seven — dreadful screams were heard by 
the startled people in the neighboring town, 
ringing Uirough the thick walls of the castle, 
and the dark deep night; and they said, as they 
were thus horribly awakened from their sleep, 
"May Heaven be merciful to the King; for 
those cries forbode that no good is being done 
to him in his dismal prison!" Next morning he 
was dead — not bruised, or stabbed, or marked 
upon the body, but much distorted iu the face; 
and it was whispered afterward thai those two 
villains, Gournay and Ogle, had burnt up his 
inside with a red-hot iron. 

If you ever come near Gloucester, and see the 
center tower of its beautiful Cathedral, with its 
four rich pinnacles, rising lightly in the air, you 
may remember that the wretched Edward the 
Second was buried in the old abbey of that an- 
cient city, at forty-three years old, after being 
for nineteen years and a half a perfectly incapa- 
ble King. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWAED THE THIRD. 

Roger Mortimer, the Queen's lover (who 
escaped to France in the last chapter), was far 
from profiting by the examples he had had of 
the fate of favorites. Having, through the 
Queen's influence, come into possession of the 
estates of the two Despensers, he became ex- 
tremely proud and ambitious, and sought to be 
the real ruler of England. The young King, 
who was crowned at fourteen years of age with 
all the usual solemnities, resolved not to bear 
this, and soon pursued Mortimer to his ruin. 

The people themselves were not fond of 
Mortimer — first, because he was a Royal favor 
ite ; secondly, because he was supposed to have 
helped to make a peace with Scotland which 
now took place, and in virtue of which the 
young King's sister Joan, only seven years old, 
was promised in marriage to David, the son and 
heir of Robert Bruce, who was only five years 
old. The nobles hated Mortimer because of his 
pride, riches, and power. They went so far as 
to take up arms against him; but were obliged 
to submit. The Earl of Kent, one of those who 
did so, but who afterward went over to Mortimer 
and Ihe Queen, was made an example of in the 
following cruel manner: 

He seems to have been anything but a wise 
old Earl; and he was persuaded, by the agents 
of the favorite and the Queen, that poor King 
Edward the Second was not really dead; and 



thus was betrayed into writing letters favoring 
his rightful claim to the throne. This was 
made out to be high treason, and he was tried, 
found guilty and sentenced to be executed. 
They took the poor old lord outside the town of 
Winchester, and there kept him waiting some 
three or four hours until they could find some- 
body to cut off his head. At last, a convict said 
he would do it, if the government would pardon 
him in return; and they gave him the pardon; 
aud at one blow he put the Earl of Kent out of 
his last suspense. 

While the Queen was in France, she had found 
a lovely and good young lady, named Philippa, 
who she thought would make an excellent wife 
for her son. The young King married this lady 
soon after he came to the throne ; and her first 
child, Edward, Prince of Wales, afterward be- 
came celebrated, as we shall presently see, under 
the famous title of Edward the Black Prince. 

The young King, thinking the time ripe for 
the downfall of Mortimer, took counsel with 
Lord Montacute how he should proceed. A 
Parliament was going to be held at Nottingham, 
and that lord recommended that the favorite 
should be seized by night in Nottingham Cas- 
tle, where he was sure to be. Now', this, like 
many other things, was more easily said than 
done; because, to guard against treachery, the 
great gates of the castle were locked every 
night, and the great keys were carried up stairs 
to the Queen, who laid them under her own 
pillow. But the castle had a governor, and the 
governor, being Lord Montacute's friend, con- 
fided to him how he knew of a secret passage 
underground, hidden from observation by the 
weeds and brambles with which it was over- 
grown , and how, through that passage, the con- 
spirators might enter in the dead of the night, 
and go straight to Mortimer's room. Accord- 
ingly, upon a certain dark night, at midnight, 
they made their way through this dismal place : 
startling the rats, and frightening the owls and 
bats: and came safely to the bottom of the main 
tower of the castle, where the King met them, 
and took them up a profoundly dark staircase 
in a deep silence. They soon heard the voice of 
Mortimer in council with some friends; and, 
bursting into the room with a sudden noise, 
took him prisoner. The Queen cried out from 
her bedchamber, " Oh, my sweet son, my dear 
son, spare my gentle Mortimer!" They carried 
him off, however; and, before the next Parlia- 
ment, accused him of having made differences 
between the young King and his mother, and 
of having brought about the death of the Earl of 
Kent, and even of the late King; for, as you 
know by this time, when they wanted to get rid 
of a man in those old days, they were not very 
particular of what they accused him. Mortimer 
was found guilty of all this, and was sentenced 
to be hanged ^it Tyburn. The King shut his 
mother up in genteel confinement, where she 
passed the rest of her life; and now he became 
King in earnest. 

The first effort he made was to conquer Scot- 
land. The English lords who had lands in Scot- 
land, finding that their rights were not re- 
spected under the late peace, made war on their 
own account, choosing for their general Ed- 
ward, the son of John Baliol, who made such a 
vigorous fight, that in less than two months 
he won the whole Scottish kingdom. He was 
joined, when thus triumphant by the King and 
Parliament; and he and the King in person 
besieged the Scottish forces in Berwick. The 
whole Scottish army coming to the assistance 
of their countrymen, such a furious battle 
ensued, that thirty thousand are said lo have 
been killed in it. Baliol was then crowned King 
of Scotland, doing homage to the King of Eng- 
land; but little came of his successes after all, 
for the Scottish men rose against him, within 
no very long time, and David Bruce came 
back within ten years, and took his kingdom. 

France was a far richer country than Scot- 
land, and the King had a much greater mind to 
conquer it. So, he let Scotland alone and pre- 
tended that, he had a claim to the French throne 
in right of his mother. He had, in reality, no 
claim at all; but that mattered little in those 
times. He brought over to his cause many little 
princes and sovereigns, and even courted the 
alliance of the people of Flanders — a busy, 
working corhmunity, who> had very small re- 
spect for kings, and whose head man 'was a 
brewer. With such forces as he raised by these 



means, Edward inva> 
little by that, except i 
on the war to the e: 
thousand pounds. Tl.i 
gaining a great sea-fig 



but he did 
in carrying 
e hundred 
did better; 
>r of Sluys. 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



29 



This success, however, was very short-lived, for hand, rode from company to company, and 

the Flemings took fright at the siege of St. rank to rank, cheering and encouraging both 

Omer. and ran away, leaving their weapons officers and men. Then the whole army break- 

and baggage behind them. Philip the French fasted, each man sitting on the ground where 

King, coming up with his army, and Edward he had stood; and then they remained quietly 

being very anxious to decide the war, proposed on the ground, with their weapons ready 

to settle the difference by single combat with ; Up came the Freuch King with all his great 

him, or by a fight of one hundred knights on force. It-was dark and angry weather; there 

each side. The French King said he thanked was an eclipse of the sun; there was a thunder 



him; but, being very well as he was, he would 
rather not. So, after some skirmishing and 
talking, a short peace was made. 

It was soon broken by King Edward's favor- 
ing the cause of John, Earl of Montford; a 
French nobleman, who asserted a claim of his 
own against the French King, and offered to 
do homage to England for the Crown of 
France, if lie could obtain it through England's 
help. This French lord himself was soon de- 



storm, accompanied with tremendous rain; the 
frightened birds flew screaming above Ibe 
■ soldiers' heads. A certain captain in the French 
army advised the French King, who was by no 
means cheerful nit to begin the battle until the 
morrow. The King taking this advice, gave 
the word to halt. But, those behind not un- 
derstanding it, or desiring to be foremost with 
the rest, came pressing on. The roads for a 
great distance were covered with this immense 



feated by the French King's son, and shut up army, and with the common people from the 
in a tower in Paris; but his wife, a courageous villages, who were flourishing their rude weap- 
and beautiful woman, who is said to have had ons, and making a great noise. Owing to these 



the courage of a man and the heart of a lion, 
assembled the people of Brittany, where she 
then -was; and, showing them her infant son, 
made many pathetic entreaties to them not to 
desert her and their young Lord. They took 
fire at this appeal, and rallied round her in the 
strong Castle of Hennebon. Here she was not 
only besieged without by the French under 
Charles de Bois, but was endangered within by 
a dreary old 'bishop, who was always represent- 
ing to the people what horrors they must under- 
go if they were faithful — first from famine, and 
afterward from fire and sword. But this noble 
lady, whose heart never failed her, encouraged 
her soldiers by her own example; went from 
post to post like a great general; even mounted 
on horseback fully armed, and, issuing from 



circumstances, the French army advanced in 
the greatest confusion ; every French lord do- 
ing what he liked with his own men, and put- 
ting out the men of every other French lord. 

Now, their King relied strongly upon a great 
body of crossbow-men from Genoa; and these 
he ordered to the front to begin the battle, on 
finding that he could not stop it. They shouted 
once, they shouted twice, the3 r shouted three 
times, to alarm the English archers; but, the 
English would have heard them shout three 
thousand times, and would have never moved. 
At last the crossbow men went forward a little, 
and began to discharge their bolts; upon which, 
the English let fly such a hail of arrows, that the 
Genoese speedily made off — for their crossbows, 
besides being heavy to carry, required to»be 



the castle by a by-path fell upon the French wound up with a handle, and consequently took 
camp, set fire to the tents, and threw the whole time to re-load; the English, on the other hand, 
force into disorder. This done, she got safely could discharge their arrows almost as fast as 
back to Hennebon again, ana was received with the arrows could fly. 

loud shouts of joy by the defenders of the! When the French King saw the Genoese turn- 
castle, who had given her up for lost. As they , ing, he cried out to his men to kill these scoun- 
were now very short of provisions, however, drels who were doing harm instead of service, 
and as they could not dine off enthusiasm, and This increased the confusion. Meanwhile, the 
as the old bishop was always saying, " I told English archers, continuing to shoot as fast as 
you what it would come to!" they began to ever, shot down great numbers of the French 
lose heart, and to talk of yielding the castle up. soldiers and knights; whom certain sly Cornish- 
The brave Countess, retiring to an upper room, men and Welshmen, from the English army, 
and looking with great grief out to sea, where creeping along- the ground, dispatched with 
she expected relief from England, saw, at this great knives. 

very time, the English ships in the distance, and , The Prince and his division were at this time 
was relieved and rescued! Sir Walter Manning, so hard pressed, that the Earl of Warwick sent 
the English commander, so admired her courage, a message to the King, who was overlooking 
that, being come into the castle with the En- the battle from a windmill, beseeching him to 
glish knights, and having made a feast there, he send more aid. 

assaulted the French by way of desert, and beat , "Is my son killed?" said the King, 
them off triumphantly. Then he and the | " No, sire, please God," returned the mes- 
knights came back to the castle with great joy; senger. 
aud the Countess, who had watched them from a " Is he wounded?" said the King. 



high tower, thanked them with all her heart, 
and kissed them every one. 

This noble lady distinguished herself after- 
ward in a sea-fight with the French of Guern- 



sey, when she was on her way to England to pressed. ' 



" No, sire." 
"Is he thrown to the ground?" said the 
King. 

'No, sire, not so; but, he is veiy hard 



Then," said the King, "go back to those 
who sent you, and tell them I shall send no aid ; 
because I set my heart upon my son proving 
himself this day a brave knight, ana because I 
am resolved, please God, that the honor of a 



ask for more troops. Her great spirit aroused 

another lady, the wife of another French lord 

(whom the French King very barbarously niur 

dered), to distinguish herself scarcely less 

The time was fast coming, however, when Ed 

ward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great star great victory shall be his. 

of this French and English war. These bold words, being reported to the 

It was in the month of July, in the year one ' Prince and his division, so raised their spirits, 

thousand three hundred and forty-six, when the that they fought better than ever. The King 

King embarked at Southampton for France, ! of France charged gallantly with his men many 

with an army of about thirty thousand men in ' times; but it was of no use. Night closing in, 

all, attended by the Prince of Wales and by his horse was killed under him by an English 

several of the chief nobles. He landed at La arrow, and the knights and nobles, who had 

Hogue, in Normandy; and, burning and de- clustered thick about him early in the day, were 

stroying as he went, according to custom, ad- now completely scattered. At last, some of his 

vanced up the left bank of th< river Seine, and few remaining followers led him off the field 

fired the small towns even close to Paris; but, by force, since he would not retire of himself, 

being watched from the right bank of the river and they journeyed away to Amiens. The 

by the French King and all his army, it came victorious English, lighting their watch fires, 

to this at hist, that Edward found himself, on made merry on the field, and the King, riding 

Saturday, the twenty-sixth of August, one to meet his gallant son, took him in his arms 

thousand three hundred and forty-six, on a ris- kissed him, and told him that he had acted no- 

mg ground behind the little French village of bly, and proved himself worthy of the. dav and 

Crecy, face to face with Ihe French king's of the crown. While it was yet night Kin"- 

force. And, although the French King had an Edward was hardly aware of the great victory 

enormous army— in number -more than eight he had gained; but, next day, it was dis- 

timeshis— he there resolved to beat him or to covered that eleven princes, twelve hundred 

be beaten. knights, and thirty thousand common men 

The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of lay dead upon the French side. Among these 

Oxford and the Earl of Warwick, led the first was the King of Bohemia, an old blind man- 

division of the English army; two other great who, having been told that his son was 

Earls led the second; and the King the third, wounded in the battle, and that no force could 

When the morning dawned, the King received stand against the Black Prince, called to him 

the sacrament, and heard prayers, -and then, two knights, cut himself on horseback be- 

mounted on horseback with a white wand in his tween them, fastened the three bridles together, 



and dashed in among the English, where he was 
presently slain. He bore as his crest three 
white ostrich feathers, with the motto Ich dien, 
signifying in English " I serve. " This crest and 
motto were taken by the Prince of Wales in 
remembrance of that famous day, and have 
been borne by the Prince of Wales ever sinci . 
_ Fivedaysafter this great battle, the King laid 
siege to Calais. This siege —ever afterward mem- 
orable—lasted nearly a year. In order to starve 
the inhabitants out, King Edward built so 
many wooden houses for the lodgings of his 
troops, that it is said their quarters looked like 
a second Calais suddenly sprung up around 
the first. Early in the siege, the governor of 
the town drove out what he called the useless 
mouths, to the number of seventeen hundred 
persons, men and women, young and old. King 
Edward allowed them to pass through his lines, 
and even fed them, and dismissed them with 
money; but, later in the siege, he was not so 
merciful — five hundred more, who were after- 
ward driven out, dying of starvation and 
misery. The garrison were so hard pressed at 
last, that they sent a letter to King Philip, tell- 
ing him that they had eaten all the horses, all 
the dogs, and all the rats and mice that could 
be found in the place; and that, if he did not 
relieve them, they must either surrender to the 
English, or eat one another. Philip made one 
effort to give them relief; but they were so 
hemmed in by the English power, that he 
could not succeed, and was fain to leave the 
place. Upon this they hoisted the English 
flag, and surrendered to King Edward. " Tell 
your general," said he to the humble messen- 
gers who came out of the town, " that 1 re- 
quire to have sent here six of the most distin- 
guished citizens, bare-legged, and in their 
shirts, with ropes about their necks; and let 
1hose six men bring with them the keys of the 
castle and the town." 

When the Governor of Calais related this to 
the people in the Market-place there was great 
weeping and distress; in the midst of which, 
one worthy citizen, named Eustace de .Saint 
Pierre, rose up and said that, if the six men re- 
quired were not sacrificed, the whole population 
would be; therefore, he offered himself as thi 
first. Encouraged by this bright example, five 
other worthy citizens rose up one after another, 
and offered themselves to save the rest. The 
Governor, who was too badly wounded to be 
able to walk, mounted a poor old horse that 
had not been eaten, and conducted these good 
men to the gate, while all the people cried and 
mourned. 

Edward received them wrathfully, and 
ordered the heads of the whole six to be struck 
off. However, the good Queen fell upon her 
knees, and besought the King to give them up 
to her. The King replied, " I wish you had 
been somewhere else; but I cannot refuse you." 
So she had them properly dressed, made a 
feast for them, and sent them back with a hand- 
some present, to the great rejoicing of the whole 
camp. I hope the people of Calais loved the 
daughter to whom she gave birth soon after- 
ward, for her gentle mother's sake. 

Now came that terrible disease, the Plague, 
into Europe, hurrying from the heart of China; 
and killed the wretched people— especially the 
poor — in such enormous numbers, that one 
half of the inhabitants of England are related to 
have died of it. It killed "the cattle in great 
numbers, too; and so few workingmen re- 
mained alive, that there were not enough left 
to till the ground. 

After eight years of differing and quarreling, 
the Prince of Wales again invaded France with 
an army of sixty thousand men. He went 
tlirough the south of the country, burning and 
plundering wheresoever he went; while his 
father, who had si ill the Scottish war upon his 
hands, did the like in Scotland, but was har- 
assed and worried in his retreat from that 
country by the Scottish men, who repaid his 
cruelties with interest. 

The French King, Philip, was now dead, 
and was succeeded by his son John. The Black 
Prince, called by that name from the color of 
the armor he wore to set off his fair complex- 
ion, continuing to burn and destroy in France, 
roused John into determined opposition ; and so 
cruel had the Black Prince been in his cam- 
paign, and so severely had the French peasants 
suffered, that he could not find one who, for 
love, or mone}'. or the fear of death, w ould tell 
him what the French King was doing, or where 
he was. Thus it happened that he came upon 
the French King's forces, all of a sudden, near 
the town of Poictiers, and found that the whole 



30 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



neighboring country was occupied by a vast 
French army. "God help us!" said the 
Black Prince; " we must make the best of it." 

So, on a Sunday morning, the eighteenth of 
September, the Prince— whose army was now 
reduced to ten thousand men in all — prepared 
to give battle to the French King, who had 
sixty thousand horse alone. While he was so 
engaged, there came riding from the French 
camp a Cardinal, who had persuaded John to 
let him offer terms, .and try to save the shed- 
ding of Christian blood. "Save my honor," 
said the Prince to I his good priest, " and save 
the honor of my army, and I will make any 
reasonable terms." He offered to give up all 
the towns, castles, and prisoners he had taken, 
and to swear to make no war in France for 
seven years; but as John would hear of nothing 
but his surrender, with a hundred of his chief 
knights, the treaty was broken off, and the 
Prince said quietly—" God defend the right; 
we shall fight to-morrow." 

Therefore, on the Monday morning, at break 
of day, the two armies prepared for battle. 
The English were posted in a strong place, which 
could only be approached by one narrow lane, 
skirted by hedges on both sides. The French 
attacked them by this lane ,- but were so galled 
and slain by English arrows from behind the 
hedges, that they were forced to retreat. Then 
went six hundred English bowmen round about, 
and, coming upon the rear of the French army, 
rained arrows on them thick and fast. The 
French knights, thrown into confusion, quitted 
their banners and dispersed in all directions. 
Said Sir John Chandos to the Prince, ' ' Piide 
forward, noble Prince, and the day is yours. 
The King of France is so valiant a gentleman, 
that 1 know he will never fly, and may be 
taken prisoner." Said the Prince to this, 
" Advance, English banners, 1 the name of 
God and St. George!" and o they pressed 
until they came up with the French King, fight- 
ing fiercely with his battle-ax, and,, when all 
his nobles had forsaken him, attended faith- 
fully to the last by his youngest son Philip, 
only sixteen years of age. Father and son 
fought well, and the King had already two 
wounds in his face, and had been beaten' down, 
where he at last delivered himself to a banished 
French knight, and gave him his right-hand 
glove in token that he had done so. 

The Black Prince was generous as well as 
brave, and he invited his Royal prisoner to sup- 
per in his tent, and waited upon him at table, 
and, when they afterward rode into London 
in a gorgeous procession, mounted the French 
King on a fine cream-colored horse, and rode 
at his side on a little pony. This was all very 
kind, but I think it was, perhaps a little the- 
atrical too, and has been made more meritori- 
ous than it deserved to be; especially as I am 
inclined to think that the greatest kindness to 
the King of France would have been not to have 
show him to the people at all. However, it 
must be said for these acts of politeness that, in 
course of time, they did much to soften the 
horrors of war and the passions of conquerors. 
It was a long, long time before the common 
soldiers began to have the benefit of such 
courtly deeds ; but they did at last ; and thus 
it is possible that a poor soldier who asked for 
quarter at the battle of Waterloo, or any other 
such great fight, may have owed his life in- 
directly to Edward the Black Prince. 

At this time there stood in the Strand, in Lon- 
don, a palace called the Savoy, which was given 
up to the captive King of France and his son 
for their residence. As the King of Scotland 
had now been King Edward's captive for eleven 
years too, his success was, at this time, tolera- 
bly complete. The Scottish business was settled 
by the prisoner being released under the title of 
Sir David, King of Scotland and by his engag- 
ing to pay a large ransom. The state of France 
encouraged England to propose harder terms to 
that country, where the people rose against the 
unspeakable cruelty and barbarity of its nobles; 
where the nobles rose in turn against the people; 
where the most frightful outrages were com- 
mitted on all sides ; and where the insurrection 
of the peasants, called the insurrection of the 
Jacquerie, from Jacques, a common Christian 
name among the country people of France, 
awakened terrors and hatreds that have scarcely 
yet passed away. A treaty, called the Great 
Peace, was at last signed, under which King 
Edward agreed to give up the greater part of his 
conquests, and King John to pay, within six 
years, a ransom of three million crowns of gold. 
He was so beset by his own nobles and courtiers 
for having yielded to these conditions — though 



they could help him to no better— that he came 
back of his own will to his old palace-prison of 
the Savoy, and there died. 

There was a sovereign of Caslile, at that time, 
called Pedro the Cruel, who deserved the name 
remarkably well: having committed, among 
other cruelties a variety of murders. This 
amiable monarch, being driven from his throne 
for his crimes, went to the province of Bor- 
deaux, where the Black Prince — now married 
to his cousin Joan, a pretty widow — was resid- 
ing, and besought his help. The Prince, who 
took to him much more kmdly than a prince of 
such fame ought to have taken to such a ruffian, 
readily listened to his fair promises, and, agree- 
ing to help him, sent secret orders to some trou- 
blesome disbanded soldiers of his and his fa- 
ther's, who called themselves the Free Compan- 
ions, and who had been a pest to the French 
people for some time, to aid this Pedro. The 
Prince himself, going into Spain to head the 
army of relief, soon set Pedro on his throne 
again — where he no sooner found himself than, 
of course, he behaved like the villain he was, 
broke his word without the least shame, and 
abandoned all the promises he had made to the 
Black Prince. 

Now it had cost the Prince a good deal of 
money to pay soldiers to support this murderous 
King, and finding himself, when he came back 
disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, 
but deeply in debt, he began to tax his French 
subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed to 
the French King, Charles; war again broke 
out; and the French town of Limoges, which 
the Prince had greatly benefited, went over to 
the French King. Upon this he ravaged the 
province of which it was the capital; burnt, 
and plundered, and killed in the old sickening 
way ; and refused mercy to the prisoners, men, 
women, and children, taken in the offending 
town, though he was so ill, and so much in 
need of pity himself from Heaven, that he was 
carried in a litter. He lived to' come home and 
make himself popular with the people and Par- 
liament, and he died on Trinity Sunday, the 
eighth of June, one thousand three hundred and 
seventy-six, at forty-six years old. 

The whole nation mourned for him as one of 
the most renowned and beloved princes it had 
ever had ; and he was buried with great lamenta- 
tions in ' Canterbury -Cathedral. Near to the 
tomb of Edward the Confessor, his monument, 
with his figure, carved in stone, and represented 
in the old black armor, lying on its back, may 
be seen at this day, with an ancient coat of 
mail, a helmet, and a pair of gauntlets hanging 
from a beam above it, which most people like 
to believe were once worn by the Black Prince. 

King Edward did not outlive his renowned 
son long. He was old, and one Alice Perrers, 
a beautiful lady, had contrived to make him so 
fond of her in his old age, that be could refuse 
her nothing, and made himself ridiculous. She 
little deserved his love, or — what 1 dare say she 
valued a great deal more — the jewels of the late 
Queen, which he gave her among other rich 
presents. She took the very ring from his 
finger on the morning of the day when be died, 
and left him to be pillaged by his faithless serv- 
ants. Only one good priest was "true to him, 
and attended him to the last. 

Besides being famous for the great victories 1 
have related, the reign of King Edward the 
Third was rendered memorable in better ways, 
by the growth of architecture and the erection 
of Windsor Castle. In better ways still, by the 
rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor parish 
priest: who devoted himself to exposing, with 
wonderful power and success, the ambition and 
corruption of the Pope, and of the whole church 
of which he was the head. 

Some of those Flemings were induced to come 
to England in this reign, too, and to settle in 
Norfolk, where they made better woolen cloths 
than the English had ever had before. The 
Order of the Garter (a very fine thing in its way, 
but hardly so important as good clothes for the 
nation) also dates from this period. The King- 
is said to have picked up a lady's garter at a 
ball, and to have said Horn soitqui mal y pense 
— in English, " Evil be to him who evil thinks 
of it." The courtiers were usually glad to imi- 
tate what the King said or did, and hence from 
a slight incident the Order of the Garter was in- 
stituted, and became a great dignity. So the 
story goes. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER EICHAED THE SECOND. 

Richard, son of the Black Prince, a boy 
eleven years of age, succeeded to the Crown 
under the title of King Richard the Second. 
The whole English nation were ready to admire 
him for the sake of his brave father. As to the 
lords and ladies about the court, they declared 
him to be the most beautiful, the wisest, and 
the best, even of princes— whom the lords and 
ladies about the court generally declare to be 
the most beautiful, the wisest, and the best of 
mankind. To flatter a poor boy in this base 
manner was not a very likely way to develop 
whatever good was in him; and it brought him 
to anything but a good or happy end. 

The Duke of Lancaster, the young King's 
uncle— commonly called John, of Gaunt, from 
having been born at Ghent, which the common 
people so pronounced — was supposed to have 
some thoughts of the throne himself; but, as he 
was not popular, and the memory of the Black 
Prince was, he submitted to his nephew. 

The war with France being still unsettled, the 
Government of England wanted money to pro- 
vide for the expenses that might arise out of it. 
Accordinsly, a certain tax, called the Poll Tax, 
which had originated in the last reign, was or- 
dered to be levied on the people. This was a 
tax on every person in the kingdom, male 
and female, above the age of fourteen, of 
three groats (or three fourpenny-pieces) a year; 
clergymen were charged more, and only beggars 
I were exempt. 

I have no need to repeat that the common peo- 
ple of England had long been suffering under 
great oppression. They were still the mere 
slaves of the lords of the land on which they 
li ved, and were on most occasions harshly and 
unjustly treated. But, they had begun by this 
time to think very seriously of not bearing quite 
so much; and, probably, were emboldened by 
that French insurrection I mentioned in the last 
chapter. 

The people of Essex rose against the Poll Tax, 
and, being severely handled by the government 
| officers, killed some of them. At this very time 
one of the tax-collectors, going his rounds from 
house to house, at Dartford in Kent came to the 
cottage of one Wat, a tiler by trade, and claimed 
the tax upon his daughter. Her mother, who 
was at home, declared that she was under the 
age of fourteen; upon that, the collector (as 
other collectors had already done in different 
parts of England) behaved in a savage way, 
and brutally insulted Wat Tyler's daughter. 
The daughter screamed, the mother screamed. 
. Wat' the Tiler, who was at work not far off, 
ran to the spot, and did what any honest father 
under such provocation might have done — 
struck the collector dead at a blow. 

Instantly the people of that town uprose as 
one man. They made Wat Tyler their leader; 
they joined with the people of Essex, who were 
in arms under a priest called Jack Straw; they 
took out of prison another priest named John 
Ball; and, gathering in numbers as they went 
along, advanced, in a great confused army of 
poor men, to Blackheath. It is said that they 
wanted to abolish all property, and to declare 
all men equal. I do not think this very likely; 
because they stopped the travelers on the roads, 
and made them swear to be true to King Rich- 
ard and the people. Nor were they at all dis- 
posed to injure those who had done them no 
harm, merely because they were of high station; 
for, the King's mother, who had to pass through 
their camp at Blackheath, on her way to her 
young son lying for safety in the Tower of Lon- 
don, bad merely to kiss a few dirty-faced 
rough%earded men who were noisily fond of 
' royalty, and so got away in perfect safety. Next 
day the whole mass marched on to London 
Bridge. 

There was a drawbridge in the middle, which 
William Walworth, the"~Mayor, caused to be 
raised to prevent their coming into the City; but 
they soon terrified the citizens into lowering it 
again, and spread themselves, with great up- 
roar, over the streets. They broke open the 
prisons ; they burned the papers in Lambeth Pal- 
ace; they destroyed the Duke of Lancaster's 
Palace, the- Savoy, in the Strand, said to be the 
most beautiful and splendid in England; they 
set fire to the books and documents in the Tem- 
ple; and made a great riot. Many of these out- 
rages were committed in drunkenness; since 
those citizens who had well-filled cellars were 
only too glad to throw them open, to save the 
rest of their property; but even the drunken 
rioters were very careful to steal nothing. They 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



61 



were so angry with one man who was seen to 
take a silver cup at the Savoy Palace, and put 
it in his breast, that they drowned him m the 
river cup and all. 

The young King had been taken out to treat 
with them before they committed these excesses; 
but, he and the people about him were so fright- 
ened by the riotous shouts, that they got back 
to the Tower in the best way they could. This 
made the insurgents bolder; so they went on 
noting away, striking off the heads of those who 
did not, at a moment's notice, declare for King 
Richard and the people; and killing as many of 
the unpopular persons whom they supposed to be 
their enemies as they could by any means lay 
hold of. In this manner they passed one very 
violent day, and then proclamation was mate 
that the King would meet them at Mile-end, and 
grant their requests. 

The rioters went to Mile-end, to the number 
of sixty thousand, and the King met them there, 
and to the King the rioters peaceably proposed 
four conditions. First, that neither they, nor 
their children, nor any coming after them, 
should be made slaves any more. Secondly, 
that the rent of land should be fixed at a certain 
price in money, instead of being paid in serv- 
ice. Thirdly, that they should have liberty to 
buy and sell in all markets and public places, 
like other free men. Fourthly, that they should 
be pardoned for past offenses. Heaven knows, 
there was nothing very unreasonable in these 
proposals! The young King deceitfully pre- 
tended to think so, and kept thirty clerks up all 
night, writing out a charter accordingly. 

Now, Wat Tyler himself wanted more than 
this. He wanted the entire abolition of the for- 
est laws. He was not at Mile-end with the rest, 
but, whi'e that meeting was being held, broke 
into the Tower of London, and slew the Arch- 
bishop and. the Treasurer, for whose heads the 
people had cried out loudly the day before. He 
and his men even thrust their swords into the 
bed of the Princess of Wales while the Princess 
was in it to make certain that none of their ene- 
mies were concealed there. 

So, Wat and his men still continued armed, 
and rode about the City. Next morning, the 
King, with a small train of some sixty gentle- 
men — among whom was Walworth the Mayor 
— rode into Smithfleld, and saw Wat and his 
people at a little distance. Says Wat to his 
men, " There is the King. 1 will go speak with 
him, and tell him what we want." 

Straightway Wat rode up to him, and began 
to talk. " King," says Wat, " dost thou see all 
my men there?" 

" Ah!" says the King. "Why?" 
"Because," says Wat, "they are all at my 
command, and have sworn to do whatever I bid 
them." 

Some declared afterward that, as Wat said 
this, he laid his hand on the King's bridle. • 
Others declared that he was seen to play with 
his own dagger. I think, myself, that he just j 
spoke to I he King like a rough, angry man as j 
he was, and did nothing more. At any rate, he 
was expecting no attack, and preparing for no re- 1 
sistance, when Walworth the Mayor did the not 
very valiant deed of drawing a short sword, and 
stabbiDg him in the throat. He dropped from 
his Horse, and one of the King's peoDle speedily 
finished him. So fell Wat Tyler. Fawners and j 
flatterers made a mighty triumph of it, and set i 
up a cry which will occasionally find an echo to 
this day. But Wat was a hard- working man, ! 
who had suffered much, and had been foully j 
outraged; and it is probable that he was a man ! 
of a much higher nature and a much braver I 
spirit than any of the parasites who exulted 
then, or have exulted since, over his defeat. 

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent 
their bows to avenge his fall. If the young- 
King had not had presence of mind at that dan- j 
gerous moment, both he and the Mayor to boot | 
might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But the 
King, riding up to the crowd, cried out that 
Tyler was a traitor, and that he would be their j 
leader. They were so taken by surprise, that | 
they set up a great shouting, and followed the 
boy until he was met at Islinglon by a large j 
body of soldiers. 

The end of this rising was the then usual end. 
As soon as the King found himself safe, he un- 
said all he had said, and undid all he had done; I 
some fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried 
(mostly m Essex) with great rigor, and executed 
with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged 
on gibbets, and left there as a terror to the coun- 
try people; and, because their miserable friends 
took some of the bodies down to bury, the King 
ordered the rest to be chained up — which was 



the beginning of the barbarous custom of hang- 
ing in chains. The King's falsehood in this 
business makes such a pitiful figure, that I think 
Wat Tyler appears in history as bevond com- 
parison the truer and more respectable man of 
the two. 

Richard was now sixteen years of age. and 
married Anne of Bohemia, an excellent prin- 
cess, who was called " the good Queen Anne." 
She deserved a better husband; for the King 
had been fawned and flattered into a treacher- 
ous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man. 

There were two Popes at this time (as if one 
were not enough!), and their quarrels involved 
Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was 
still troublesome, too ; and at home there was 
much jealousy and distrust, and plotting and 
counter-plotting, because the King feared the 
ambition of his relations, and particularly of his 
uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and the Duke 
had his party against the King, and the King- 
had his party against the Duke. Nor were 
these home troubles lessened when the Duke 
went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of 
that kingdom; for then the Duke of Gloucester, 
another of Richard's uncles, opposed him, and 
influenced the Parliament to demand the dis- 
missal of the King's favorite ministers. The 
King said, in reply, that he would not for such 
men dismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. ! 
But, it had begun to signify little what a King 
said, when a Parliament was determined; so 
Richard was at last obliged to give way, and to 
agree to another Government of the kingdom, 
under a commission of fourteen nobles, for a 
year. His uncle of Gloucester was al the head 
of this commission, and, in fact, appointed every- 
body composing it. ! 

Having done all this, the King declared, as 
soon'as he saw an opportunity, that he had 
never meant to do it, and that it was all illegal; 
and he got the judges secretly to sign a declara- j 
tion to thai effect. The secret oozed out direct- 
ly, and was carried to the Duke of Gloucester. 
The Duke of Gloucester, at the head of forty 
thousand men, met the King on his entering 
into London to enforce his authority; the King 
was helpless against him; his favorites aud min- 
isters were impeached, and were mercilessly ex- " 
ecuted. Among them were two men whom the 
people regarded with very different feelings; 
one, Robert Tresilian. Chief Justice, who was 
haled for having made what was called " the 
bloody circuit," to try the rioters; the other, Sir 
Simon Burley, an honorable knight, who had 
been the dear friend of the Black Prince, and 
the governor and guardian of the King. For ! 
this gentleman's life the good Queen even begged I 
of Gloucester on her knees; bul Gloucester, 
(with or without reason) feared and hated him, j 
and replied that, if she valued her husband's 
crown, she had better beg no more. All this , 
was done under what was called by some the 
wonderful — and bv others, with better reason, ' 
Ihe merciless — Parliament. 

But Gloucester's power was not to last for- 
ever. He held it for only a year longer; in which 
year the famous battle of Otter-bourne, sung in 
the old ballad of Chevy Chase, was fought. 
When the year was out, the King, turning sud- 
denly to Gloucester, in the midst of a great 
Council said, " Uncle, how old am I?" " Your 
Highness," returned the Duke, "is in your 
twenty-second year. " " Am 1 so much?" said 
the King; " then I will manage my own affairs! 
I am much obliged to you, my good lords, for 
your past services, but 1 need them no more." 
He followed Ihis up by appointing a new Chan- 
cellor and a new Treasurer, and announced to 
the people that he had resumed the Govern- 
ment. He held it for eight years without oppo- 
sition. Through all that time, he kept his de- 
termination to revenge himself some day upon 
his uncle Gloucester in his own breast. 

At last the good Queen died, and then the 
King, desiring to take a second wife, proposed ' 
to his Council that he should marry Isabella of 
France, the daughter of Charles the Sixth; who, i 
the French courtiers said (as the English court- ' 
iers had said of Richard), w as a marvel of beauty 
and wit, and quite a phenomenon — of seven 
years old. The Council were divided about 
this marriage, but it took place. It secured 
peace between England and France for a quar- 
ter of a century ; but it was strongly opposed to 
the prejudices of the English people. The Duke 
of Gloucester, who was anxious to take the oc- 
casion of making himself popular, declaimed 
against it loudly, and this at length decided the 
King to execute the vengeance he had been 
nursing so long. 

He went with a gay company to the Duke of 



Gloucester's house, Pleshey Castle, in Essex, 
where the Duke, suspecting nothing, came out 
into the courtyard to receive his Royal visitor. 
While the King conversed in a friendly manner 
with the Duchess, the Duke was quietly seized, 
.hurried away, shipped for Calais, and lodged in 
the castle there. His friends, the Earls of Ar- 
undel and Warwick, were taken in the same 
treacherous manner, and confined to their cas- 
tles. A few days after, at Nottingham, they 
were impeached of high treason. The Earl of 
Arundel was condemned and beheaded, and the 
Earl of Warwick was banished. Then, a writ 
was sent by a messenger to the Governor of 
Calais, requiring him to send the Duke of Glou- 
cester over to be tried. In three days he re- 
turned an answer that he could not do that, be- 
cause the Duke of Gloucester had died in 
prison. The Duke was declared a traitor, his 
property was confiscated to the King, a real or 
pretended confession he had made in prison to 
one of the Justices of the Common Pleas was 
produced against him, and there was an end of 
the matter. How the unfortunate Duke died 
very few cared to know. Whether he really 
died naturally; whether he killed himself; 
whether, by the King's order, he was strangled 
or smothered between two beds (as a serving- 
man of the Governor's, named Hall, did after- 
ward declare), cannot be discovered. There is 
not much doubt that he was killed, somehow or 
other, by his nephew's orders. Among the 
most active nobles in these proceedings were the 
King's cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, whom the 
King had made Duke of Hereford tc smooth 
down the old family quarrels, and some others: 
who had in the family-plotting times done just 
such acts themselves as they now condemned 
in the Duke. They seem to have been a corrupt 
set of men; but such men were easily found 
about the court in such days. 

The -people murmured at all this, and were 
still very sore about the French marriage The 
nobles saw how little the King cared for law, 
and howcrafty he was, and began to be some- 
what afraid of themselves. The King's life was 
a life of continued feasting and excess; his 
retinue, down to the meanest servants, were 
dressed in the most costly manner, and caroused 
at his tables, it is related, to the number of ten 
thousand persons every day. He himself, sur- 
rounded by a body of ten thousand archers, and 
enriched by a duty on wool which the Com- 
mons had granted him for life, saw no danger 
of ever being otherwise than powerful and ab- 
solute, and was as fierce and haughty as a King- 
could be. 

He had two of his old enemies left, in the 
persons of the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. 
Sparing these no more than the others, he tam- 
pered with the Duke of Hereford until he got 
him to declare before the Council that the Duke 
of Norfolk had lately held some treasonable 
talk with him, as he was riding near Brentford; 
and that he had told him, among other things, 
that he could not believe the King's oath — 
which nobody could, I should think. For this 
treachery he obtained a pardon, and the Duke 
of IN orf oik was summoned to appear and defend 
himself. As he denied the charge, and said his 
accuser was a liar and a traitor, both noblemen, 
according to the manner of those times, wire 
held in custody, and the truth was ordered to be 
decided by wager of battle at Coventry. This 
wager of battle meant that whosoever won fne 
combat was to be considered in the right, which 
nonsense meant, in effect, that no strong man 
could ever be wrong. A great holiday was 
made; a great crowd assembled, with much 
parade and show, and the two combatants were 
about to rush at each other with their lances, 
when Ihe King, sitting in a pavilion to see fair, 
threw down the truncheon he carried in his 
hand, and forbade the battle. The Duke of 
Hereford was to be banished for ten years, and 
the Duke of Norfolk was to be banished for lite. 
So said the King. The Duke of Hereford went 
to France, and went no further. The Duke of 
Norfolk made a pilgrimage to the Holy Lane? 
and afterward died at "Venice of a broker heart. 

Faster and fiercer, after this, the King went 
on in his career. The Duke of Lancaster, who 
was the father of the Duke of Hereford, died 
soon after the departure of his son; and the 
King, although he had solemnly granted to that 
son leave to inherit his father's property, if it 
should come to him during his banishment, im- 
mediately seized it all, like a robber. The 
judges were so afraid of him, that they dis- 
graced themselves by declaring this theft to be 
just and lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. 
He outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a 



32 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



frivolous pretense, merely to raise money by 
way of fines for misconduct. In short, he did 
as many dishonest things as he could; and 
cared so little for the discontent of his subjects 
— though even the spaniel favorites began to 
whisper to him that there was such a thing as 
discontent afloat — that he took that time,, of all 
others, for leaving England and making an ex- 
pedition against the Irish. 

He was scarcely gone, leaving the Duke of 
York Regent in his absence, when his cousin, 
Henry of Hereford, came over from France to 
claim the rights of which he had been so mon- 
strously deprived. He was immediately joined 
by' the two great Earls of Northumberland and 
Westmoreland; and his uncle, the Regent, find- 
ing the King's cause unpopular and the disin- 
clination of the army to act against Henry very 
strong, withdrew with the Royal forces toward 
Bristol. Henry at the head of an army, came 
from Yorkshire (where he had landed) to Lon- 
don, and followed him. They joined their 
forces — how they brought that about is not dis- 
tinctly understood — and proceeded to Bristol 
Castle, whither three noblemen had taken the 
young Queen. The castle surrendering, they 
presently put those three noblemen to death. 
The Regent then remained there, and Henry 
went on to Chester. 

All this time the boisterous weather had pre- 
vented the King from receiving intelligence of 
what had occurred. At length it was conveyed 
to him in Ireland, and he sent over the Earl of 
Salisbury, who, landing at Conway, rallied the 
Welshmen, and waited for the King a whole 
fortnight; at the end of that time the Welsh- 
men, who were perhaps not very warm for him 
in the beginning, quite cooled down, and went 
home. When the King did land on the coast at 
last, he came with a pretty good power, but his 
men cared nothing for him, and quickly deserted. 
Supposing the Welshmen to be still at Conway, 
he disguised himself as a priest, and made for 
that place, in company with his two brothers and 
some few of their adherents. But, there were 
no Welshmen left — only Salisbury and a hun- 
dred soldiers. In this distress, the King's two 
brothers, Exeter and Surrey, offered to go to 
Henry to learn what his intentions were. Sur- 
rey, who was true to Richard, was put into 
prison. Exeter, who was false, took the Royal 
badge, which was a hart, off his shield, and as- 
sumed the rose, the badge of Henry. After this, 
it was pretty plain to the King what Henry's in- 
tentions were, without sending any more mes- 
sengers to ask. 

The fallen King, thus deserted — hemmed in 
on all sides, and pressed with hunger — rode 
here and rode there, and went to this castle, and 
went to that castle, endeavoring to obtain some 
provisions, but could find none. He rode wretch- 
edly back to Conway, and there surrendered 
himself to the Earl of Northumberland, who 
came from Henry, in reality to take him pris- 
oner, but in appearance to offer terms; and 
whose mem were hidden not far off. By this 
Earl he was conducted to the Castle of Flint, 
where his cousin Henry met him, and dropped on 
his knee as if he were still respectful to hissov- 
ereign. 

" Fair cousin of Lancaster," said the King, 
"you are very welcome " (very welcome, no 
doubt; but he would have been more so in 
chains or without a head). 

My lord," replied Henry, " I am come a lit- 
tle before my time; but, with your good pleas- 
ure, I will show you the reason. Your people 
complain with some bitterness, that you have 
ruled them rigorously for two-and-twenty 
years. Now, if it please God, I will help you to 
govern the m better in future. ' ' 

''Fair cousin," replied the abject King, 
" since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth me mightily." 

After this, the trumpets sounded, and the King- 
was stuck on a wretched horse, and carried 
prisoner to Chester, where he was made to issue 
a proclamation calling a Parliament. From 
Chester he was taken on toward London. At 
Lichfield he tried to escape by getting out of a 
window, and letting himself down into a gar- 
den. It was all in vain, however, and he was 
carried on and shut up in the Tower, where no 
one pitied him, and where the whole people, 
whose patience he had quite tired out, re- 
proached him without mercy. Before he got 
there, it is related that his very dog left him and 
departed from his side to lick the hand of Henry. 

The day beioie me Parlia<r>«nt met, a depu- 
tation went to this wrecked Kin^, anr 1 *^\d him 
that he had promised the Earl of Nortnumbf" - - 
iand at Conway Castle to resign the crown. He 
said he was quite ready to do it, and signed a 



paper in which he renounced his authority, and 
absolved his people from their allegiance to him. 
He had so little spirit left, that he gave his 
Royal ring to his triumphant cousin Henry 
with his own hand, and said that if he could 
have had leave to appoint a successor, that 
same Henry was the man of all others whom 
he would have named. Next day the Parlia- 
ment assembled in Westminster Hall, where 
Henry sat at the side of the throne, which was 
empty and covered with a cloth of gold. The 
paper just signed by the King was read to the 
multitude amid shouts of joy, which were 
echoed through all the streets: when some of 
the noise had died away, the King was formally 
deposed. Then Henry arose, and, making the 
sign of the cross on his forehead and breast, 
challenged the realm of England as his right: 
the Archbishops of Canterbury and Y T ork seated 
him on the throne. 

The multitude shouted again, and the shouts 
re-echoed throughout all the streets. No one 
remembered, now, that Richard the Second had 
ever been the most beautiful, the wisest, and 
the best of princes; and he now made living (to 
my thinking), a far more sorry spectacle in the 
Tower of London than Wat Tyler had made, 
lying dead, among the hoofs of the Royal horses 
in Smithfield. 

The Poll Tax died with Wat. The Smiths to 
the King and Royal Family could make no 
chains in which the King could hang the peo- 
ple's recollection of him; so the Poll Tax was 
never collected. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENBY THE FOTJBTH, 
CALLED BOLINGBROKE. • 

Dubtng the last reign, the preaching . of 
'Wickliffe against the pride and cunning of the 
Pope and all his men had made a great noise in 
England - . Whether the new King wished to 
be in favor with the priests, or whether he 
hoped, by pretending to be very religious, to 
cheat Heaven itself into the belief that he was not 
a usurper, I don't know. Both suppositions are 
likely enough. It is certain that he began his 
reign by making a strong show against the fol- 
lowers of Wickcliffe, who were called Lollards, 
or heretics — althougn his father, John of Gaunt, 
had been of that way of thinking, as he himself 
had been more than suspected of being. It is no 
less certain that he first established in England 
the detestable and atrocious custom, brought 
from abroad, of burning those people as a pun- 
ishment for their opinions. It was the importa- 
tion into England of one of the practices of 
what was called the Holy Inquisition ; which was 
the most unholy and the most infamous tribu- 
nal that ever disgraced mankind, and made 
men more like demons than followers of Our 
Saviour. 

No real right to the crown, as you know, was 
in this King. Edward Mortimer, the young 
Earl of March — who was only eight or nine 
years old, and who was descended from the 
Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of Henry's 
father — was, by succession, the real heir to the 
throne. However, the. King got his son declared 
Prince of Wales; and, obtaining possession of 
the young Earl of March, and his little brother, 
kept them in confinement (but not severely) in 
Windsor Castle. He then required the Parlia- 
ment to decide what was to be done with. the 
deposed King, who was quiet enough, and who 
only said that he hoped his cousin Henry 
would be " a good lord " to him. The Parlia- 
ment replied that the}' would recommend his 
being kept in some secret place where the peo- 
ple could not resort, and where his friends could 
not be admitted to see him. Henry accordingly 
passed this sentence upon him, and it now began 
to be pretty clear to the nation that Richard the 
Second would not live very long. 

It was a noisy Parliament, as it was an un- 
principled one, and the Lords quarreled so vio- 
lently among themselves as to which of them 
had been loyal and which disloyal, and which 
consistent and which, inconsistent, that forty 
gauntlets are said to have been thrown upon the 
floor at one time as challenges to as many bat- 
tles; the truth being that they were all false and 
base together, and had been at one time with 
the old .King, and at another time with the new 
one, and seldom true for any length of time to 
any one. They soon began to plot again. A 
conspiracy was formed to invite the King to a 
tournament at Oxford, and then to take him by 
surprise and kill him. This murderous enter- 
prise, which was agreed upon at secret meetings 



in the house of the Abbot of Westminster, was- 
betrayed by the Earl of Rutland— one of the 
conspirators. The King, instead of going to the 
tournament or staying at Windsor (where the 
conspirators suddenly went, on finding them- 
selves discovered, with the hope of seizing him), 
retired to London, proclaimed them all traitors, 
and atlvanced upon them with a great force. 
They retired into the West of England pro- 
claiming Richard King; but, the people rose 
against them, and they were all slain. Their 
treason hastened the death of the deposed mon- 
arch. Whether he was killed by hired assas- 
sins, or whether he was starved to death, or 
whether he refused food on hearing of his 
brothers being killed (who were in that plot), is 
very doubtful. He met his death somehow: 
and his body was publicly shown at St. Paul's 
Cathedral, with only the lower part of the face 
uncovered. I can scarcely doubt that he was 
killed by the King's orders. 

The French wife of the miserable Richard 
was now only ten years old; and when her 
father, Charles of France, heard of her misfort- 
unes and of her lonely condition in England, 
he went mad: as he had several times done be- 
fore, during the last five* or six years. The 
French Dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon took 
up the poor girl's cause, without caring much 
about it, but on the chance of getting something 
out of England. The people of Bordeaux, who- 
had a sort of superstitious attachment to the- 
memory of Richard, because he was born there, 
swore by the Lord that he had been the best- 
man in all his kingdom — which was going 
rather far — and promised to do great things 
against the English. Nevertheless, when they 
came to consider that they, and the whole peo- 
ple of France, were ruined by their own nobles, 
and that the English rule was much the better 
of the t;wo, they cooled down again; and the 
two Dukes, although they were very great men, 
could do nothing without them. Then began 
negotiations between France and England for 
the sending home to Paris of the poor little 
Queen, with all her jewels and her fortune of 
two hundred ( thousand francs in gold. The 
King was quite willing to restore the young 
lady, and even the jewels; but he said he really, 
could not part with the money. So, at last she 
was safely deposited at Paris without her fort- 
une, and then the Duke of Burgundy (who was 
cousin to the French King) began to quarrel 
with the Duke of Orleans (who was brother to 
, the French King) about the wholg matter; and 
those two Dukes made France even more 
wretched than ever. 

As the idea of conquering Scotland was still 
popular at home, the King marched to the river 
Tyne, and demanded homage of the King-of 
that country. This being refused, he advanced 
to Edinburgh, but did little there; for, his army 
being in want of provisions, and the Scotch be- 
ing very careful to hold them in check without 
giving battle, he was obliged to retire. It is to 
his immortal honor that in this sally he burnt 
no villages, and slaughtered no people, but was 
particularly careful that his army should be 
merciful and harmless. It was a great example 
in those ruthless times. 

A war among the border people of EutAind 
and Scotland went on for twelve monthsrand 
then the Earl of Northumberland, the nobleman 
who had helped Henry to the crown, began to 
rebel against him — probably because nothing 
that Henry could do for him would satisfy his 
extravagant expectations. There was a certain 
Welsh gentleman, named Owen Glen dower, 
who had been a student in one of the Inns of 
Court, and had afterward been in the service of 
the late King, whose Welsh property was taken 
from him by a powerful lord related to the pres- 
ent King, who was his neighbor. Appealing 
for redress, and getting none, he took up arms, 
was made an outlaw, and declared himself sov- 
ereign of Wales. He pretended to be a magi- 
cian ; and not only were the Welsh people stu- 
pid enough to' believe him, but even Henry be- 
lieved him too; for, making three expeditions 
into Wale.s, and being three times driven back 
by the wildnessof the country, the bad weather, 
and the skill of Glendower, he thought Ik- was 
(.defeated by the Welshman's magic arts. How- 
| ever, he took Lord Grey and Sir Edmund Mort- 
] imer prisoners, and allowed the relatives of Lord 
! Grey to ransom him, but would not extend such 
! favor to Sir Edmund Mortimer. Now, Henry 
1 Percy, called Hotspur, son of the Earl of North- 
■ umberland, who was married to Mortimer's sis- 
ter, is supposed to have taken offense at this; 
and therefore, in conjunction with his father 
and some others, to have joined Owen Glen- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



33 



dower, and risen against Henry. It is by no bot's room bad long been called the Jerusalem 
menus clear that this was the real cause of the Chamber, people said it was all the same thing, 



conspiracy; but perhaps it was made the pre 

text. It was formed, and was very powerful; 

including Scroop, Archbishop of York, and the 

Earl of Douglas, a powerful and brave Scottish j forty-seventh year 

nobleman. The King was prompt and active, ! teenth of his reign 

and the two armies met at Shrewsbury. 

There were about fourteen thousand men in 
each. The old Earl of Northumberland being 
sick, the rebel forces were led by his son. The 
King wore plain armor to deceive the enemy; 



and were quite satisfied with the prediction. 

The King died on the twentieth of March, 
one thousand four hundred and thirteen, in the 
of his age, and the four- 
He was buried in Canter- 
j bury Cathedral. He bad been twice married, 
and had, by his first wife, a family of four sons 
and two daughters. Considering his duplicity 
before he came to the throne, his unjust seizure 
of it, and, above all, his making that monstrous 



and four noblemen, with the same object, wore I law for the burning of what the priests called 



the Royal arms. The rebel charge was so furious, 
that every one of those gentlemen was killed, 
the Royal standard was beaten down, and the 
young Prince of Wales was severely wounded 
in the iace. But he was one of the bravest and 
best soldiers that ever lived, and he fought so 
well, and the King's troops were so encouraged 
hy his bold example, that they rallied immedi- 
ately, and cut the enemy's forces all to pieces. 
Hotspur was killed by an arrow in the brain, 
and the rout was so complete that the whole 
rebellion was struck down by this one blow. 
The Earl of Northumberland surrendered him- 
self soon after hearing of the death of his son, 
and received a pardon for all his offenses. 

There were some lingenngs of rebellion yet : 
Owen Glendower being retired to Wales, and a 



heretics, he was a reasonably good King, as 
Kings went. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ENGLAHD TJNDER HENHY THE FIFTH. 
FlKST Paet. 

The Prince of Wales began his reign like a 
generous and honest man. He set the young 
Earl of March free; he restored their estates 
and their honors to the Percy family, who had 
lost them by their rebellion against his father ; 
he ordered the imbecile and unfortunate Richard 
to be honorably buried among the Kings of 
England ; and he dismissed all his wild compan- 
ions, with assurances that they should not want, 
if they would resolve to be steady, faithful, and 



preposte»ous story being spread among the ig- 
norant people that King Richard was still alive. 
How they could have believed such nonsense it I true, 

is difficult to imagine; but they certainly did It is much easier to burn men than to burn 

suppose that the court fool of the late King, who ' their opinions; and those of the Lollards were 

was something like him, was he himself; so that spreading every day. The Lollards were repre- 
it seemed as if, after giving so much trouble to ! sented by the priests— probably falsely for the 



the country in his life, he was still to trouble it 
after his death This was not the worst. The 
young Earl of March and his brother were stol- 
en out of Windsor Castle. Being retaken, and 
"being found to have been spirited away by one 
Lady Spencer, she accused her own brother, that 
Earl of Rutland who was in the former conspir- 



most part — to entertain treasonable designs 
against the new King; and Henry, suffering 
himself to be worked upon by these representa- 
tions, sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the 
Lord Cobham, to them, after trying in vain to 
convert him by arguments. He was declared 
guilty, as the head of the sect, and' sentenced to 



acy, and was now Duke of York, of being in the the flames; but he escaped from the Tower be- 



plot. For this he was ruined in fortune, 
though not put to death ; and then another plot 
arose among the old Earl of Northumberland, 
some other lords, and that same Scroop, Arch 
bishop of York, who was with the rebels be- 



fore the day of execution (postponed for fifty 
days by the King himself), and summoned the 
Lollards to meet him near London on a certain 
day. So the priests told the King, at least. I 
doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond 



fore. These conspirators caused a writing to . such as was got up by their agents. On the day 
be posted on the church-doors, accusing the appointed, instead of five-and-twenty thousand 
King of a variety of crimes; but, the King be- j men, under the command of Sir John Oldcas- 
iBg eager and vigilant to oppose them, they were tie, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found 
all taken, and the Archbishop was executed. I only eighty men, and no Sir John at all. There 
This was the first time that a great churchman was, in another place, an addle-headed brewer, 
had been slain by the law in England; but the | who had gold trappings to his horses, and a pair 



King was resolved that it should be done, and 
done it was. 

The next most remarkable event of this time 
was the seizure, by Henry, of the heir to the 
Scottish throws— James, a boy of nine years old. 
He had been put aboard ship by his father, the 
Scottish King Robert, to save him from the de- 
signs of his uncle, when, on his way to France, 
he was accidentally taken by some English 
cruisers. He remained a prisoner in England 



of gilt spurs in his breast — expecting to be made 
a knight next day by Sir John, and so to gain 
the right to wear them — but there was no Sir 
John, nor did anybody give information re- 
specting him, though the King offered great re- 
wards for such intelligence. Thirty of these 
unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawn | 
immediately, and were then burnt, gallows and 
all ; and the various prisons in and around Lon- 
don were crammed full of others. Some of these 



'for nineteen years, and became in his prison a unfortunate men made various confessions of 
student and a famous poet. j treasonable designs; but, such confessions were 

With, the exception of occasional troubles j easily got, under torture and the fear of fire, 
with the Welsh and with the French, the rest ■ and are very little to be trusted. To finish the 
of King Henry's reign was quiet enough. But, I sad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may 
the King was far from happy, and probably was ' mention that lie escaped into Wales, and re- 
troubled in his conscience by knowing that he [ mained there safely for four years. When dis- 
had usurped the crown, and had occasioned the covered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if 
death of his miserable cousin. The Prince of : he would have been taken alive— so great was 
Wales, though brave and generous, is said to the old soldier's bravery — if a miserable old 
have been wild and dissipated, and even to have ! woman had not come behind him, and broken 
drawn his sword on Oascoigne, the Chief Jus- j his legs with a stool. He was carried to London 
tice of the King's Bench, because he was firm in in a horse-litter, was fastened bj an iron chain 
dealing impartially with one of his dissolute ! to a gibbet, and so roasted to death, 
companions. Upon this the Chief Justice is To make the state of France as plain as I can 
said to have ordered him immediately to prison ; , in a few words, I should tell you that the Duke 
the Prince of Wales is said to have submitted j of Orleans and the Duke of Burgundy, com- 
with a good grace; and the King is said to have '■ monly called " John without fear,"" had had a 
exclaimed, " Happy is the monarch who has so ! grand reconciliation of their quarrel in the last 
just a judge, and a son so willing to obey the reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heav- 
laws!" This is all very doubtful, and so is an- ', enly state of mind. Immediately after which, 
other story (of which Shakespeare has made on a Sunday, in the public streets of Paris, the 
beautiful use), that the Prince once took the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of 
crown out of his father's chamber as he was twenty men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy- 
sleeping, and tried it on his own head. j according to his own deliberate confession. The 

The King's health sank more and more, and ! widow of King Richard had been married in 
he became subject to violent eruptions on the ' France to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, 
face, and to bad epileptic fits, and his spirits ; The poor mad King was quite powerless to help 
sank every day. At last, as he was praying be- her, and the Duke of Burgundy became the real 
fore the shrine of St. Edward at Westminster ' master of France. Isabella dying, her husband 
Abbey, he was seized with a terrible fit, and was puke of Orleans since the death of his father) 
carried into the Abbot's chamber, where he married the daughter of the Count of Armag- 
presently died. It had been foretold that he nac, who, being a much abler man than his 
would die at Jerusalem, which certainly is not, ' young son-in-law, headed his party; thence 
and never was, Westminster. But, as the Ab- called after him Armagnacs. Thus, France was 



now in this terrible condition, that it had in it 
the party of the King's son, the Dauphin 
Louis; the party of the Duke of Burgundy, 
who was the father of the Dauphin's ill-used 
wife; and the party of the Armagnacs; all 
hating each other; all fighting together; all 
composed of the most depraved nobles that the 
earth has ever known; and all tearing unhappy 
France to pieces. 

The late King had watched these dissensions 
from England, sensible (like the French people) 
that no enemy of France could injure her more 
than her own nobility. The present King now 
advanced a claim to the French throne. His 
demand being, of course, refused, he reduced 
his proposal to a certain large amount of French 
territory and to demanding the French Princess, 
Catherine, in marriage, with a fortune of two 
millions of golden crowns. He was offered less 
territory and fewer crowns, and no Princess; 
but he called his embassadors home, and pre- 
pared for war. Then, he proposed to take the 
Princess with one million of crowns. The 
French court replied that he should have the 
Princess with two hundred thousand crowns 
less; he said this would not do (he had never 
seen the Princess in his life), and assembled his 
army at Southampton. There was a short plot 
at home, just at that time, for deposing him, 
and making the Earl of March King ; but the 
conspirators were all speedily condemned and 
executed, and the King embarked for France. 

It is dreadful to observe how long a bad ex- 
ample will be followed; but, it is encouraging 
to know that a good example is never thrown 
away. The King's first act, on disembarking 
at the mouth of the river Seine, three miles from 
Harfleur, was to imitate his father, and to pro- 
claim his solemn orders that the lives and prop- 
erty of the peaceable inhabitants should be re- 
spected on pain of death. It is agreed by French 
writers, to his lasting renown, that even while 
his soldiers were suffering the greatest distress 
from want of food, these commands were rigid- 
ly obeyed. 

With an army in all of thirty thousand men, 
he besieged the town of Harfleur both by sea 
and land for five weeks; at the end of ,vhich 
time the town surrendered, and the inhabitants 
were allowed to depart with only fivepence 
each, and a part of their clothes. All the rest 
of their possessions was divided amongst the 
English army. But, that army suffered so 
much, in spite of its successes, from disease and 
privation, that it was already reduced one half. 
Still, the King was determined not to retire 
until he had struck a greater blow. Therefore, 
against the advice of all his counselors, he 
moved on with his little force toward Calais. 
When he came up to the river Somme he was 
unable to cross, in consequence of the fort being 
fortified; and, as the English moved up the left 
bank of the river looking for a crossing, the 
French, who bad broken all the bridges, moved 
up the right bank, watching them, and waiting 
to attack them when they should try to pass it. 
At last the English found a crossing, and got 
safely over. The French held a council of war 
at Rouen, resolved to give the English battle, 
and sent heralds to King Henry to know by 
which road he was going. " By the road that 
will take me straight to Calais!" said the King, 
and sent them away with a present of a hundred 
crowns. 

The English moved on until they beheld the 
French, and then the King gave orders to form 
in line of battle. The French not coming on. 
the army broke up after remaining in battle ar- 
ray till night, and got good rest and refreshment 
at a neighboring village. The French were now 
all lying in another village, through which they 
knew the English must pass. They were re- 
solved that the English shoidd begin the battle. 
The English had no means of retreat, if their 
King had any such intention; and so the two 
armies passed the night, close together. 

To understand these armies well, you must 
bear in mind that the immense French army 
had, among its notable persons, almost the 
whole of that wicked nobility whose debauch- 
ery had made France a desert; and so besotted 
were they by pride, and by contempt for the 
common people, that they had scarcely any bow- 
men (if, indeed, they had an}- at all) in their 
whole enormous number: which, compared 
with the English army, was at least as six to one. 
For these proud fools had said that the bow was 
not a fit weapon for kuightly hands, and that 
France must be defended by gentlemen only. 
We shall see, presently, what hand the gentle- 
men made of it. 
Now, on the English side, among (he little 



34 



~A CHILD'S HJ STORY OF ENGLAND. 



force, there was a good proportion of men who 
were not gentlemen by any means, but who were ! 
rood stout archers for all that. Among them, 
in the morning — having slept little at night, 
while the French were carousing and making 
sure of victory— the King rode on a gray horse; 
wearing on his head a helmet of shining steel, 
surmounted by a crown of gold, sparkling with 
precious stones; and bearmg over Jus armor, em- 
broidered together, the arms of England and the 
arms of Prance. The archers looked at the 
shining helmet and the crown of gold aDd the 
sparkling jewels, and admired them all; but, 
what they admired most was the king's cheer- 
ful face and his bright blue eye, as he told them 
that, for himself, he had made up his mind to 
conquer there or to die there, and that England 
should never have a ransom to pay for Mm. 
There was one brave knight who chanced to say 
that he wished some of the many gallant gen- 
tlemen and good soldiers, who were then idle at 
home in England, were there to increase their 
numbers. But the King told him that, for his 
part, he did not wish for one more man. " The 
fewer we have," said he, " the greater will be 
the honor we shall" win!" .His men, being now 
all in good heart, were refreshed with bread and 
wine, and heard prayers, and waited quietly for 
the French. The King waited for the French, 
because they were drawn up thirty deep (the 
little English force was only three deep), on very 
difficult and heavy ground ; and he knew that, 
when they moved, there must be confusion 
among them. 

As they did not move he sent off two parties : 
one to lie concealed in a wood on the left of the 
French; the other to set fire to some houses be- 
hind the French after the battle should be 
begun. This was scarcely done, when three of 
the proud French gentlemen, who were to de- 
fend their country without any help from the 
base peasants, came riding out, calling upon the 
English to surrender. The King warned those 
gentlemen himself to retire with all speed if they 
cared for their lives, and ordered the English 
banners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas 
Erpingham, the great English general, who 
commanded the archers, threw his truncheon 
into the air joyfully; and all the Englishmen, 
kneeling down upon the ground, and biting it 
as if they took possession of the country, rose 
up with a great shout, and fell upon the French. 

Every archer was furnished with a great stake 
tipped with iron ; and his orders were to thrust 
this stake into the ground, to discharge his 
arrow, and then fall back when the French 
horsemen came on. As the haughty French 
gentlemen, who were to break the English arch- 
ers and utterly destroy them with their knightly 
lances, came riding up, they were received with 
such a blinding storm of arrows, that they broke 
and turned. Horses and men rolled over one 
another, and the confusion was terrific. Those 
who rallied and charged the archers got among 
the stakes on slippery and boggy ground, and 
were so bewildered that the English archers — 
who wore no armor — and even took off their 
leathern coats to be more active — cut them to 
pieces, root and branch. Only three French 
horsemen got within the stakes, and were in- 
stantly dispatched. All this time the dense 
French army being in armor, were sinking knee 
deep into the mire; while the light English 
archers, half naked, were as fresh and active as 
if they were fighting on a marble floor. 

But now, the second division of the French, 
coming to the relief of the first, closed up in a 
firm mass; the English, headed by the King, at- 
tacked them ; and "the deadliest part of the battle 
began. The King's brother, the Duke of Clar- 
ence, was struck down, and numbers of the 
French surrounded him; but King Henry, 
standing over the body, fought like a lion until 
they were beaten off. 

Presently came up a band of eighteen French 
knights, bearing the banner of a certain French 
lord, who had sworn to kill or take the English 
King. One of them struck him such a blow 
with a battle-ax that he reeled and fell upon his 
knees; but his faithful men, immediately clos- 
ing round him, killed every one of those eight- 
een knights, and so that French lord never 
kept his oath. 

The French Duke of Alencon, seeing this, 
made a desperate charge, and cut his way close 
up to the Royal Standard of England. He beat 
down the Duke of Tork, who wasstanding near 
it; and, when the King came to his rescue, 
struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But, 
he never struck another blow in this world ; for, 
even as he was in the act of saying who he was, 
and that he surrendered to the King ; and even 



as the King stretched out his hand to give him 
a safe and honorable acceptance of the offer ; he 
fell dead, pierced by innumerable wounds. 

The death of this nobleman decided the bat- 
tle. The third division of the French army, 
which had never struck a blow yet, and which 
was, in itself, more than double the whole En- 
glish power, broke and fled. At this time of 
the fight, the English, who as yet had made no 
prisoners, began to take them in immense num- 
bers, and were still occupied in doing so, or in 
killing those who would not surrender, when a 
great noice arose in the rear of the French— 
their flying banners were seen to stop — and King 
Henry, supposing a great reinforcement to have 
arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners should 
be put to death. As soon, however, as it was 
found that the noise was only occasioned by a 
body of plundering peasants, the terrible mas- 
sacre was stopped. 

Then King Henry called to him the French 
herald, and asked him to whom the victory be- 
longed. 

The herald replied, " To the King of Eng- 
land." 

" We have not made this havoc and slaugh- 
ter," said the King. " It is the wrath of Heaven 
on the sins of France. What is the name of 
that castle yonder?" 

The herald answered him, " My lord, it is the 
Castle of Azincourt. ' ' 

Said the King, " From henceforth this battle 
shall be known to posterity by the name of the 
battle of Azincourt. ' ' 

Our English historians have made it Agin- 
court; but, under that name, it will e.ver be 
famous in English annals. 

The loss upon the French side was enormous. 
Three dukes were killed, two more were taken 
prisoners, seven counts were killed, three more 
were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights 
and gentlemen were slain upon the field. The 
English loss amounted to sixteen hundred men, 
among whom were the Duke of York and the 
Earl of Suffolk. 

War is a dreadful thing; audit is appalling 
to know how the English were obliged, next 
morning, to kill those prisoners mentally wound- 
ed who yet writhed in agony uporrHhe ground; 
how the dead upon the French side were 
stripped by their own countrymen and country- 
women, and afterward buried' in great pits; how 
the dead upon the English side were piled up in 
a great barn, and how their bodies and the barn 
were all burned together. It is in such things, 
and in many more much too horrible to relate, 
that the real desolation and wickedness of war 
consist. Nothing can make war otherwise than 
horrible. But the dark side of it was little 
thought of, and soon forgotten ; and it cast no 
shade of trouble on the English people, except 
on those who had lost friends or relations in the 
fight. They welcomed their King home with 
shouts of rejoicing, and plunged into the water 
to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and 
flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every 
town through which he passed, and hung rich 
carpets and tapestries out of the windows, and 
strewed the streets with flowers, and made the 
fountains run with wine, as the great field of 
Agincourt had run with blocd. 



Second Part. 

That proud and wicked French nobility who 
dragged their country to destruction, and who 
were every day and every year regarded with 
deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of 
the French people, learnt nothing even from the 
defeat of Agincourt. So far from uniting 
against the common enemy, they became, 
among themselves, more violent, more bloody, 
and more false — if that were possible — than they 
had been before. The Count of Armagnac per- 
suaded the French King to plunder of her 
treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and to make 
her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the 
bitter enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed 
to join him in revenge. He carried her off to 
Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regent of 
France, and made him her lieutenant. The Ar- 
magnac party were at that time possessed of 
Paris; but, one of the gates of the city being 
secretly opened on a certain night to a party of 
the Duke's men, they got into Paris, threw into 
the prisons all the Armagnacs upon whom they 
could lay their hands, and a few nights after- 
ward, with the aid of a furious mob of sixty 
thousand people, broke the prisons open, and 
killed them all. The former Dauphin was now 
dead, and the King's third son bore the title. 



Him, in the height of this murderous scene, a 
French knight hurried out of bed, wrapped in 
a sheet, and bore away to Poictiers. So, when 
the revengeful Isabella and the Duke of Bur 
gundy entered Paris in triumph after the slaugh 
ter of their enemies, the Dauphin was proclaims d 
at Poictiers as the real Regent. 

King Henry had not been idle since his vic- 
tory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave at- 
tempt of the French to recover Harfleur ; had 
gradually conquered a great part of Normandy; 
and, at this crisis of affairs, took the important 
town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year. 
This great loss so alarmed the French, that the 
Duke of Burgundy proposed that a meeting to 
treat of peace should be held between the 
French and the English kings in a plain by the 
river Seine. On the appointed day King Henry 
appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence 
and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The un- 
fortunate French King, being more mad than 
usual that day, could not come; but the Queen 
came, and with her the Princess Catherine.: who 
was a very lovely creature, and who made a real 
impression on King Henry, now that he saw her 
for the first time. This was the most important 
circumstance that arose out of the meeting. 

As if it were impossible for a French noble- 
man of that time to be true to his word of honor 
in anything, Henry discovered that the Duke of 
Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret 
treaty with the Dauphin; and he therefore aban- 
doned the negotiation. 

The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each 
of whom with the best reason distrusted the 
other as a noble ruffian surrounded by a party 
of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss how to 
proceed after this ; but at length they agreed to 
meet on a bridge over the river Yonne, where it 
was arranged that there should be two strong 
gates put up, with an empty space between 
them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should 
come into that space by one gate, with ten men 
only; and that the Dauphin should come into 
that space by the other gate, also with ten men, 
and no more. 

So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no 
further. When the Duke of Burgundy was on 
his knee before him in the act of speaking, one 
of the Dauphin's noble ruffians cut the said 
Duke down with a small ax, and others speedily 
finished him. 

It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that 
this base murder was not done with his consent; 
it was too bad, even for France, and caused a 
general horror. The Duke's heir hastened to 
make a treaty with King Henry, and the French 
Queen engaged that her husband should consent 
to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on 
condition of receiving the Princess Catherine in 
marriage, and being made Regent of France 
during'the rest of the King's lifetime, and suc- 
ceeding to the French crown at his death. He 
was soon married to the beautiful Princess, and 
took her proudly home to England, where she 
was crowned with great honor and glory. 

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace ; 
we shall soon see how long it lasted. It gave 
great satisfaction to the French people, although 
they were so poor and miserable, that, at the 
time of the celebration of the Royal marriage, 
numbers of them were dying with starvation on 
the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There 
was some resistance on the part of the Dauphin 
in some few parts of France, but King Henry 
beat it all down. 

And now, with his great possessions in France 
secured, and his beautiful wife to cheer him, 
and a son born to give him greater happiness, 
all appeared bright before him. But, in the full- 
ness of his triumph and the height of his power, 
Death came upon him, and his day was done. 
When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that 
he could not recover, he was very calm and 
quiet, and spoke serenely to those who wept 
around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he 
left to the loving care of his brother the Duke of 
Bedford, and his other faithful nobles. He 
gave them his advice that England should estab- 
lish a friendship with the new Duke of Bur- 
gundy, and offer him the regency of France ; that 
it should not set free the Royal Princes who had 
been taken at Agincourt; and-that, whatever 
quarrel might arise with France, England should 
never make peace without holding Normandy. 
Then, he laid down his head, and asked the at- 
tendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. 
Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty first of 
August, one thousand four hundred and twenty- 
two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age 
and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth 
passed away. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



35 



Slowly and mournfully they carried his em- 
balmed body in a procession of great state to 
Paris, and thence to Rouen, where his Queen 
was: from whom the sad intelligence of his 
death was concealed until he had been dead 
some days. Thence, lying on a bed of crimson 
and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, 
and a golden ball and scepter lying in the nerve- 
less hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a 
freat retinue as seemed to dye the road black, 
'he King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, 
all the Royal Household followed, the knights 
wore black armor and black plumes of feathers, 
crowds of men bore torches, making the night 
as light as day; and the widowed Princess fol- 
lowed last of all. At Calais there was a fleet of 
ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And 
so, by way ot London Bridge, where the service 
for the dead was chanted as it passed along, 'they 
brought the body to Westminster Abbey, and 
there buried it with great respect. 



Battle of the Herrings), the town of Orleans was j 
so completely hemmed in, that the besieged pro- 
posed to yield it up to their countryman the 
Duke of Burgundy. The English general, how- j 
ever, replied that his English men had won it, ' 
so far, by their blood and valor, and that his 
English men must have it. There seemed to be 
no hope for the town, or for the Dauphin, who ■ 
was so dismayed that he even thought of flying 
to Scotland or to Spain — when a"peasant girl 
rose up and changed the whole state of affairs. 

The story of this peasant girl 1 have now to 
tell. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

england under jeenry the sixth. 
Part the First. 

It had been the wish of the late King that 
while his iDfant son King Henry the Sixth, at 
this time only nine months old, was under age, 
the Duke of Gloucester should be appointed 
Regent. The English Parliament, however, 
preferred to appoint a Council of Regency, with 
the Duke of Bedford at its head: to lie repre- 
sented, in his absence only, by the Duke of 
Gloucester. The Parliament would seem to have 
been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed 
himself to be ambitious and troublesome, and, 
in the gratification of his own personal schemes, 
gave dangerous offense to the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, which was with difficulty adjusted. 

As that Duke declined the Regency of France, 
it was bestowed by the poor French King upon 
the Duke of Bedford. But, the French" King 
dying within two months, the Dauphin instant- 
ly asserted his claim to the French throne, and 
was actually crowned under the title of Charles 
the Seventh. The Duke of Bedford, to be a 
match for him, entered into a friendly league 
with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, and 
gavesthem his two sisters in marriage. War 
with France was immediately renewed, and the 
Perpetual Peace came to an untimely end. 

In the first campaign, the English, aided by 
this alliance, were speedily successful. As Scot- 
laud, however, had sent the French five thou- 
sand men and might send more, or attack the 
North of England while England was busy with 
France, it was considered that it would be a 
good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, 
who had been so long imprisoned, his liberty, 
on his paying forty thousand pounds for bis 
board and lodging during nineteen years, and 
engaging to forbid his subjects from serving 
under the flag of France. It is pleasant 'to know, 
not only that the amiable captive at last regained 
his freedom upon these terms, but that he mar- 
ried a noble English lady, with whom he had 
been long in love and became an excellent King. 
I am afraid we have met with some Kings in this 
history, and shall meet with some more, who 
would' have been very much the better, and 
would have left the world much happier, if 
they had been imprisoned nineteen years too. 

In the second campaign the English gained a 
considerable victory at Verneuil, in a battle 
which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise, for 
their resorting to the odd expedient of tying 
their baggage-horses together by the heads' and 
tails, and jumbling them up with the baggage, so 
as to convert them into a sort of live fortification 
— which was found useful to the troops, but 
which I should think was not very agreeable to 
the horses. For three years afterward very lit- 
tle was done, owing to both sides being too'poor 
for war, which is a very expensive entertain- 
ment; but, a council was then held in Paris, in 
which it was decided to lay siege to the town of 
Orleans, which was a place of great importance 
to the Dauphin's cause. An English army of 
ten thousand men was dispatched on this service, 
under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, a 
general of fame. He being unfortunately killed 
early in the siege, the Earl of Suffolk took his 
place; under whom (reinforced by Sir John Fal- 
staff , who brought up four hundred wagons laden 
with salt herrings and other provisions for the 
troops, and, beating off the French who tried to 
intercept him came victorious out of a hot skir- 
mish, which was afterward called in jest the 



Part the Second, 
the story of joan of arc. 

In a remote village among some wild hills in 
the province of Lorraine, there lived a country- 
man whose name was Jacques d'Arc. He had ; 
a daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time , 
in her" twentieth year. She had been a solitary j 
girl from her childhood ; she had often tended 
sheep and cattle for whole days where no human 
figure was seen, or human voice heard; and she j 
had often knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy . 
empty little village chapel, looking up at the 
altar, and at the dim lamp burning before it, j 
until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures ] 
standing there, and even that she heard them 
speak to her. The people in that part of France 
were very ignorant_ and superstitious, and they , 
had many ghostly 'tales to tell about what they j 
had dreamed, and what they saw among the 
lonely hills when the clouds and the mists were 
resting on them. So, they easily believed that 
Joan saw strange sights, antl they whispered 
among themselves that angels and spirits talked 
to her. 

At last, Joan told her father that she had one 
day been surprised by a great unearthly light, 
and had afterward heard a solemn voice which 
said it was St. Michael's voice, telling her that 
she was to go and help the Dauphin. Soon after 
this (she said), St. Catherine and St Margaret 
had appeared to her with sparkling crowns upon 
their heads, and had encouraged her to be virtu- ; 
ous and resolute. These visions had returned I 
sometimes; but the Voices very often; and the j 
Voices always said, " Joan, thou art appointed \ 
by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!" She 
almost always heard them while the chapel bells 
were ringing. 

There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed 
she saw and heard these things. It is very well 
known that such delusions are a disease which 
is not by any means uncommon. It is probable 
enough that there were figures of St. 3Iichael, 
and St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, in the little I 
chapel (where they would be very likely to have ! 
shining crowns upon their heads), and that they i 
first gave Joan the idea of those three person- 1 
ages. She had long been a moping, fanciful 
girl, and, though she was a very good girl, I 
dare say she was a little vain, and wishful foi 
notoriety. 

Her father, something wiser than his neigh- , 
bors, said, "I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. | 
Thou hadst better have a kind husband to take ; 
care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy 
mind!" But Joan told him in reply, that she 
had taken a vow never to have a husband, and 
that she must go, as Heaven directed her, to 
help the Dauphin. 

It happened, unfortunately for her father's 
persuasions, and most unfortunately for the poor 
girl too, that a party of the Dauphin's enemies | 
found their way into the village while Joan's 
disorder was at this point, and burnt the chapel, 
and drove out the inhabitants. The cruelties i 
she saw committed touched Joan's heart, and j 
made her worse. She said that the Voices and j 
the figures were now continually with her; that i 
they told her she was the girl who, according to j 
an old prophecy, was to deliver France ; and she i 
must go and "Kelp the Dauphin, and must remain 
with him until he should be crowned at Rheims: 
and that she must travel a long way to a certain l 
lord named Baudricourt, who could and would 
bring her into the Dauphin's presence. 

As her father still said. " I tell thee, Joan, it 
is thy fancy," she set off to find out this lord, j 
accompanied by au uncle, a poor village wheel- 
wright and cartmaker, who believed in the real- j 
ity of her visions. They traveled a long way, ; 
and went on and on, over a rough country, full 
of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and of all kinds ' 
of robbers and maraudevs, until they came to 
where this lord was. 

When his servants told him that there was a 
poor peasant girl named Joan of Arc, accom- 



panied by nobody but an old village wheelwright 
and cartmaker, who wished to see him because 
she was commanded to help the Dauphin and 
save France, Baudricourt burst out a laughing, 
and bade them send the girl away. But, he soon 
heard so much about her lingering in the town, 
and praying in the churches, and seeing visons, 
and doing harm to no one, that he sent for her, 
and questioned her. As she said the same things 
after she had been well sprinkled with holy 
water as she had said before the sprinkling, 
Baudricourt began to think there might be some 
thing in it. At all events, he thought it worth 
while to send her to her own town of Chinon, 
where the Dauphin was. So. he bought her a 
horse and a sword, and gave her two squires to 
conduct her. As the Voices had told Joan that 
she was to wear a man's dress now, she riut one 
on, and girded her sword to her side, and 
bound spurs to her heels, and mounted her 
horse, and rode away with her two squires. As 
to her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring 
at his niece in wonder until she was out of 
sight — as well he might— and then went home 
again. The best place too. 

Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until 
they came to Chinon, where she was, after some 
doubt, admitted into the Dauphin's presence. 
Picking him out immediately from all his court, 
she told him that she came commanded by 
Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct him 
to his coronation at Rheims. She also told him 
(or he pretended so afterward, to make the 
greater impression upon his soldiers) a number 
of his secrets known only to himself, and, fur- 
thermore, she said there was an old, old sword in 
the Cathedral of St. Catherine at Ficrbois, 
marked with five old crosses on the blade, which 
St. Catherine had ordered her to wear. 

Now, nobody knew anything about this old 
sword, but when the cathedral came to be ex- 
amined — which was (immediately done — there, 
sure enough, the sword was found! The Dau- 
phin then required a number of grave priests and 
bishops to give him their opinion whether the 
girl derived her power from good spirits or from 
evil spirits, which they held" prodigiously long 
debates about, in the course of which several 
learned men fell fast asleep, and snored loudly. 
At last, when one gruff old gentleman had 
said to Joan, "What language do your Voices 
speak?" and when Joan had replied to the gruff 
old gentleman, "A pleasanter language "than 
yours," they agreed that it was all correct, and 
that Joan of Arc was inspired from Heaven. 
This wonderful circumstance put new heart into 
the Dauphin's soldiers when they heard of it, 
and dispirited the English army, who took Joan 
for a witch. 

So Joan mounted horse again, and again rode 
on and on, until she came to Orleans. But she 
rode now as never peasant girl had ridden yet. 
She rode, upon a white war-horse, in a suit of 
glittering armor; with the old, old sword from 
the cathedral, newly burnished, in her belt; with 
a white flag carried before her, upon which were 
a picture of God, and the words Jesus Maria. 
In this splendid state, at the head of a great body 
of troops escorting provisions of all kinds for the 
starving inhabitants of Orleans, she appeared be- 
fore that beleaguered city. 

When the people on the walls beheld her, they 
cried out, "The Maid is come! The Maid of 
the Prophecy is come to deliver us!" And 
this, and the sight of the Maid fighting at the 
head of their men, made the French so bold, and 
made the English so fearful, that the English 
line of forts was soon broken, the troops and 
provisions were got into the town, and Orleans 
was saved. 

Joan, henceforth called the Maid of Orleans, 
remained within the walls for a few days, and 
caused letters to be thrown' over, ordering Lord 
Suffolk and his Englishmen to depart from be- 
fore the town according to the will of Heaven. 
As the English general very positively declined 
to believe"that Joan knew anything about the 
will of Heaven (which did not inend the matter 
with his soldiers, for they stupidly said, if she 
were not inspired, she was a witch, and it was 
of no use fighting against a witch), she mounted 
her while war-horse again, and ordered her 
white banner to advance. 

The besiegers held the bridge, and some strong 
towers upon the bridge; and here the Maid of 
Orleans attacked them. The fight was fourteen 
hours long. She planted a scaling ladder with 
her own hands, and mounted a tower wall, but 
was struck by an English arrow in the neck, and 
fell into the trench. She was carried away, and 
the arrow was taken out, during which opera- 
tion she screamed and cried with the pain, as any 



36 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



other girl might have done ; but presently she 
said that the Voices were speaking to her and 
soothing her to rest. After awhile she got up, 
and was again foremost in the fight. When the 
English, who had seen her fall and supposed 
her dead, saw this, they were troubled with the 
strangest fears, and seme of them cried out that 
they beheld St. Michael on a white horse (proba- 
bly Joan herself) fighting for the French. They 
lost the bridge and lost the towers, and next day 
set their chain of forts on fire, and left the place. 

But, as Lord Suffolk himself retired no fur- 
ther than the town of Jargeau, which was only 
a few miles off, the Maid of Orleans besieged 
him there, and he was taken prisoner. As the 
white banner scaled the wall, she was struck 
upon the head- with a stone, and was again tum- 
bled down into the ditch; but she only cried all 
the more, as she lay there, " On, on, my country- 
men! And fear nothing, for the Lord hath de- 
livered them into our hands!" After this new 
success of the Maid's, several other fortresses and 
places, which had previously held out against 
the Dauphin, were delivered up without a battle ; 
and at Patay she defeated the remainder of the 
English army, and set up her victorious white 
banner on a field where twelve hundred English- 
men lay dead. 

She now urged the Dauphin (who always kept 
out of the way when there was any fighting) to 
proceed to Rheirns, as the first part of her mis- 
sion was accomplished; and to complete the 
whole by being crowned there. The Dauphin 
was in no particular hurry to do this, as Rheims 
was a long way off, and the English and the 
Duke of Burgundy were still strong in the 
country through which the road lay. However, 
they set forth, with ten thousand men, and again 
the Maid of Orleans rode on and on, upon her 
white war-horse, and in her shining armor. 
"W henever they came to a town which yielded 
readily, the soldiers believed in her ; but, when- 
ever they came to a town which gave them any 
trouble, they began to murmur that she was an 
impostor. The latter was particularly the case 
at Troyes, which finally yielded, however, 
through the persuasion of one Richard, a friar 
of the place. Friar Richard was in the old 
doubt about the Maid of Orleans, until he had 
sprinkled her well with holy water, and had also 
well sprinkled the threshold of the gate by which 
she came into the city. Finding that it made no 
change in her or the gate, he said, as the other 
grave old gentlemen had said, that it was all 
right, and became her great ally. 

So, at last, by dint of riding on and on, the Maid 
of Orleans, and the Dauphin, and the ten thou- 
sand sometimes believing and sometimes unbe- 
lieving men, came to Rheims. And in the 
great Cathedral of Rheims the Dauphin act- 
ually was crowned Charles the Seventh, 
in a great assembly of the peopie. Then, 
the Maid* who with her white banner stood be- 
side the King in that hour of -his triumph, 
kneeled down upon the pavement at his feet, and 
said, with tears, that what she had been inspired 
to do was done, and that the only recompense she 
asked for was, that she should now have leave to 
go back to her distant home, and her sturdily in- 
credulous father, and her first simple escort, the 
village wheelwright and cartmaker. But the 
King said " No!" and made her and her family 
as noble as a King could, and settled upon her 
the income of a Count. 

Ah ! happy had it been for the Maid of Orleans if 
she had resumed her rustic dress that day, and had 
gone home to the little chapel and the wild hills, 
and had forgotten all these things, and had been 
a good man's wife, and had heard no stranger 
voices than the voices of little children! 

It was not to be, and she continued helping 
the King (she did a world for him, in alliance 
with Friar Richard), and trying to improve the 
lives of the coarse soldiers, and leading a relig- 
ious, an unselfish, and a modest life herself, 
beyCnd any doubt. Still, many times she prayed 
- the King to let her go home; and once she 
even took off her bright armor, and hung it up 
in a church, meaning never to wear it more. But, 
the King always won her back again — while she 
was of any use to him — and so she went on, and 
on, and on, to her doom. 

When the Duke of Bedford, who was a very 
able man, began to be active for England, and, 
by bringing the war back into France and by 
holding the Duke of Burgundy to his faith, to 
distress and disturb Charles very much, Charles 
sometimes asked the Maid of Orleans what the 
Voices said about it? But the Voices hud be- 
come (Very like ordinary voices in perplexed 
times) contradictory and confused, so that now 
they said one thing, and now said another, and 



the Maid lost credit every day. Charles 
marched on Paris, which was opposed to him, 
and attacked the suburb of St. Honore. In this 
fight, being again struck down into the ditch, 
she was abandoned by the whole army. She lay 
unaided among a heap of dead, and crawled out 
how she could. Then some of her believers went 
over to an opposition Maid, Catherine of La 
Rochelle, who said she was inspired'to tell where 
there were treasures of buried money — though 
she never did — and then Joan accidentally broke 
the old, old sword, and others said that her power 
was broken with it. Finally, at the siege of 
Compiegne, held by the Duke of Burgundy, 
where she did valiant service, she was basely 
left alone in a retreat, though facing about and 
fighting to the last; and an archer pulled her off 
her horse. 

Oh, the uproar that was made, and the thanks- 
I givings that were sung, about the capture of this 
one poor country girl! Oh, the way in which 
she was demanded to be tried for sorcery and 
heresy, and anything else you like, by the In- 
quisitor-General of France, and by this great 
man and by that great man, until it is wearisome 
to think of! She was bought at last by the 
Bishop of Beauvais for ten thousand francs, and 
was shut up in her narrow prison; plain Joan 
i of Arc again, and Maid of Orleans no more. 

1 should never have done if I were to tell 
' you how they had Joan out to examine her, 
and cross-examine her, and re-examine her, and 
worry her into saying anything and everything; 
and how all sorts of scholars and doctors be- 
stowed their utmost tediousness upon her. Six- 
teen times she was brought out and shut up 
again, and worried, and entrapped, and argued 
with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary 
business. On the last occasion of this kind she 
was brought into a burial-place at Rouen, dis- 
mally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and 
fagots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with 
a friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It 
is very affecting to know that even at that pass 
the poor girl honored the mean vermin of a 
King, who had so used her for his purposes, 
and so abandoned her; and that, while she had 
been regardless of reproaches heaped upon her- 
self, she spoke out courageously for him. 

It was natural in one so young to hold to life. 
To save her life she signed a declaration prepared 
for her — signed it with a cross, for she couldn't 
write — that all her visions and Voices had come 
from the Devil. Upon her recanting the past, 
and protesting that she would never wear a 
man's dress in future, she was condemned to 
imprisonment for life, " on the bread of sorrow 
and the water of affliction." 

But, on the bread of sorrow and the water of 
affliction, the visions and the Voices soon re- 
turned. It was quite natural that they should 
do so, for that kind of disease is much aggra- 
vated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of 
mind. ;It was not only got out of Joan that she 
considered herself inspired again, but, she was 
taken in a man's dress, which had been left — to 
entrap her — in her prison, and which she put 
on in her solitude ; perhaps in remembrance of 
her past glories, perhaps because the imaginary 
Voices told her. For this relapse into the sor- 
cery and heresy and anything else you like, she 
was sentenced to be burnt to death. And, in the 
market-place of Rouen, in the hideous dress 
which the monks had invented for such spec- 
tacles; with priests and bishops sitting in a gal- 
lery looking on, though some had the Christian 
grace to go away, unable to endure the infa- 
mous scene ; this shrieking girl — last seen 
amidst the smoke and fire, holding a crucifix 
between her hands; last heard calling upon 
Christ — was burnt to ashes. They threw her 
ashes into the river Seine; but they will rise 
against her murderers on the last day. 

From the moment of her capture, neither the 
French King nor one single man in all his court 
raised a finger to save her. It is no defense of 
them that they may have never really be- 
lieved in her, or that they may have won her 
victories by their skill and bravery. The 
more they pretended to believe in her, the 
more they had caused her to believe in her- 
self; and she had ever been true to them, 
ever brave, ever nobly devoted. But it is no 
wonder that they, who were in all things false 
to themselves, false to one another, false to their 
country, false to Heaven, false to Earth, should 
be monsters of ingratitude and treachery to a 
helpless peasant girl. 

In the picturesque old town of Rouen, where 
weeds and grass grow high on the cathedral 
towers, and the venerable Norman streets are 
still warm in the blessed sunlight, though the 



monkish fires that once gleamed horribly upon- 
them have long grown cold, there is a statue of 
Joan of Arc, in the scene of her last agony, in. 
the square to which she has given its present 
name. I know some statues of modern times — 
even in the World's Metropolis, I think — 
which commemorate less constancy, less ear- 
nestness, smaller claims upon the world's atten- 
tion, and much greater imposture. 



Part the Third. 

Bad deeds seldom prosper, happily for mart' 
kind ; and the English cause gained no advan- 
tage from the cruel death of Joan of Arc. For 
a long time the war went heavily on. The 
Dukeof Bedford died ; the alliancewith the Duke 
of Burgundy was broken, and Lord Talbot be- 
came a great general on the English side in 
France. But, two of the consequences of wars 
are, Famine— because the people cannot peace- 
fully cultivate the ground — and Pestilence, 
which comes of want, misery, and suffering. 
Both these horrors broke out in both countries, 
and lasted for two wretched years. Then, the 
war went on again, and came by slow degrees to 
be so badly conducted by the English Govern- 
ment, that, within twenty years from the execu- 
tion of the Maid of Orleans, of all the great 
French conquests, the town of Calais alone re- 
mained in English hands. 

While these victories and defeats were taking 
place in the course of time, many strange things 
happened at home. The young King, a» he 
grew up, proved to be very unlike his great 
father, and showed himself a miserable puny 
creature. There was no harm in him — he had: 
a great aversion to shedding blood; which was- 
something — but, he was a weak, silly, helpless 
young man, and a mere shuttlecock to the 
greatly lordly battledores about the court. 

Of these battledores, Cardinal Beaufort, a 
relation of the King, and the Duke of Glouces- 
ter, were at first the most powerful. The Duke 
of Gloucester had a wife, who was nonsensic- 
ally accused of practicing witchcraft to cause 
the King's death and lead to her husband's 
coming to the throne, he being the next heir. 
She was charged with having, by the help of a 
ridiculous old woman named Margery (who- 
was called a witch), made a little waxen doll in 
the King's likeness, and put it before a slow 
fire that it might gradually melt away. It was 
supposed, in such cases, that the death of the 
person whom the doll was made to represent 
was sure to happen. Whether the Duchess was 
as ignorant as the rest of them, and really did. 
make such a doll"with such an intention, I don't 
know ; but, you and I know very well that she 
might have made a thousand dolls, if she had 
been stupid enough, and might have melted 
them all, without hurting the King or anybody 
else. However, she was tried for it, and so was 
old Margery, and so was one of the Duke's 
chaplains, who was charged with having 
assisted them. Both he and Margery were 
put to death, and the Duchess, after being 
taken on foot, and bearing a lighted candle- 
three times round the City, as a penance, was- 
imprisoned for life. The Duke himself took all 
this pretty quietly, and made as little stir about 
the matter as if he were rather glad to be rid of 
the Duchess. 

But he was not destined to keep himself out of 
trouble long. The Royal shuttlecock being three- 
and-twenty, the battledores were very anxious 
to get him married. The Duke of Gloucester 
wanted him to marry a daughter of the Count 
of Armagnac; but. the Cardinal and the Earl 
of Suffolk were all for Margaret, the daughter 
of the King of Sicity, who they knew was a. 
resolute ambitious woman, and would govern 
the King as she chose. To make friends with 
this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who went over to- 
arrange the match, consented to accept her for- 
the King's wife without any fortune, and even 
to give up the two most valuable possessions 
England then had in France. So, the marriage 
was arranged, on terms very advantageous to 
the lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to 
England, and she was married at Westminster. 
On what pretense this Queen and her party 
charged the Duke of Gloucester with high, trea- 
son within a couple of years, it is impossible to. 
make out, the matter is so confused; tut they 
pretended that the King's life was in danger,, 
and they took the Duke prisoner. A fortnight 
afterward, he was found dead in bed (they said), 
and his body was shown to the people, and 
Lord Suffolk came in for the best part of hi& 
estates. You know by this time how strangely 
liable state prisoners were to sudden death. 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



ST 



If Cardinal Beaufort bad any hand in this 
matter, it did him no good, for he died within 
six weeks ; thinking it very hard and curious — 
at eighty years old! — that he could not live to 
be Pope. 
This was the time when England bad completed 
her loss of all her great French conquests. The 
people charged the loss principally upon the 
Earl of Suffolk, now a Duke, who had made 
those easy terms about the Royal Marriage, and 
who,- they believed, had even been bought by 
France. So be was impeached as a traitor, on 
a great number of charges, but chiefly on accu- 
sations of having aided the French King, and 
of designing to make his own son King of Eng- 
land. The'Commons and the people being vio- 
lent against him, the King was made (by his 
friends) to interpose to save him, by banishing 
him for five years, and proroguing the Parlia- 
ment. The Duke had much ado to escape from 
a London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in 
wait for him in St. Giles's Fields; but. he got 
down to his own estates in Suffolk, and sailed 
away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Chan- 
nel, he sent into Calais to know if he might land 
there ; but, they kept his boat and men in the 
harbor until an English ship, carrying a hun- 
dred and fifty men, and called the Nicholas of 
the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and 
ordered him on board. " Welcome, traitor, as 
men say," vas the captain's grim and not very 
respectful salutation. He was kept on board, 
a prisoner, for eight-and-forty hours, and then 
a small boat appeared rowing toward the ship. 
As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in 
it a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner 
in a black mask. The Duke was handed down 
into it, and there his head was cut off with six 
strokes of the rusty sword. Then, the little boat 
rowed away to Dover beach, where the body 
was cast out, and left until the Duchess claimed 
it. By whom, high in authority, this murder 
was committed, has never appeared. No one 
was ever punished for it. 

There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who 
gave himself the name of Mortimer, but whose 
real name was Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation 
of Wat Tyler, though he was a very different 
and inferior sort of man, addressed the Kentish 
men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad 
government of -England, among so many bat- 
tledores and such a poor shuttlecock; and the 
Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty 
thousand. Their place of assembly was Black- 
heath, where, headed by Jack, they put forth 
two papers, which they called " The Complaint 
of the Commons of Kent," and " The Requests 
of the Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent." 
They then retired to Sevenoaks. The Royal 
army coming up with them here, they beat it 
and killed their general. Then, Jack dressed 
himself in the dead general's armor, and led his 
men to London. 

Jack passed into the City from Southwark, 
over the bridge, and entered it in triumph, giv- 
ing the strictest oraers to his men not to plun- 
der. Having made a show of his forces there, 
while the citizens looked on quietly, he went 
back into Southwark in good order, and passed 
the night. Next day he came back again, hav- 
ing got hold, in the meantime, of Lord Say, an 
unpopular nobleman, Says Jack to the Lord 
Mayor and judges: " Will you be so good as to 
make a tribunal in Guildhall, and try me this 
nobleman?" The court being hastily made, he 
was found guilty, and Jack and his men cut his 
head off on Cornhill. They also cut off the 
head of his son -in law, and then went back in 
good order to Southwark again. 

But, although the citizens could bear the be- 
heading of an unpopular lord, they could not 
bear to have their homes pillaged And it did 
so happen that Jack, after dinner — perhaps he 
had drunk a little too much — began to plunder, 
the house where he lodged; upon which, of 
course, his men began to imitate him. Where- 
fore the Londoners took counsel with Lord 
Scales, who had a thousand soldiers in the 
Tower; and defended London Bridge, and kept 
Jack aud his people out. This advantage 
gained, it was resolved by divers great men to 
divide Jack's army in the old way, by making 
a great many promises on behalf of the state, 
that were never intended to be performed. This 
did divide them; some of Jack's men saying 
that they ought to take the conditions which 
were offered, and others saying that they ought 
not, for they were only a snare; some going 
home at once; others staying where they- were ; 
and all doubting and quarreling among them- 
selves. 

Jack, who was in two minds about fighting 



j or accepting a pardon, and who indeed did both, 
i saw at last that there was nothing to expect 
■ from his men, and that it was very "likely some 
of them would deliver him up, and get a reward 
| of a thousand marks, which was offered for his 
apprehension. So, after they had traveled and 
quarreled all the way from Southwark to Black- 
heath, and from Blackheath to Rochester, he 
mounted a good horse and galloped away into 
Sussex. But, there galloped after him, on a bet- 
ter horse, one Alexander Iden, who came up 
with him, had a hard fight with him, and killed 
him. Jack's head was set aloft on London Bridge, 
with the face looking toward Blackheath, 
where he had raised his flag; aud Alexander 
Iden got the thousand marks. 

It is supposed by some that the Duke of York, 
who had been removed from a high post abroad 
through the Queen's influence, and sent out of 
the way, to govern Ireland, was at the bottom 
of this rising of Jack and his men, because he 
j wanted to trouble the Government. He claimed 
: (though not yet publicly) to have a better right 
to the throne than Henry of Lancaster, as one 
of the family of the Earl of March, whom 
Henry the Fourth had set aside. Touching this 
claim, which, being through female relationship, 
was not according to the usual descent, it is 
J enough to say that Henry the Fourth was the 
j free choice of the people and the Jf arliament, 
and that his family had now reigned undis- 
| puted for sixty years. ■ The memory of Henry 
the Fifth was so famous, and the English peo- 
ple loved it so much, that the Duke of York's 
: claim, would, perhaps, never have been thought 
, of (it would have been so hopeless) but for the 
unfortunate circumstance of the present King's 
being by this time quite an idiot, and the coun- 
try very ill governed. These two circumstances 
gave the Duke of York a power he could not 
otherwise have had. 

j Whether the Duke knew anything of Jack 
Cade, or not, he came over from Ireland while 
'jack's head was on London Bridge; being se 
cretly advised that the Queen was setting up his 
enemy, the Duke of Somerset, against him. He 
went to Westminster, at the head of four thou- 
sand men, and, on his knees before the King, 
represented to him the bad state of the country, 
and petitioned him to summon a Parliament to 
consider it. This the King promised. When the 
Parliament was summoned,, the Duke of York 
accused the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of 
Somerset accused the Duke of York; and, both 
in and out of Parliament, the followers of each 
party were full of violence and hatred toward 
the other. At length the Duke of York put 
himself at the head of a large force of his ten- 
ants, and, in arms, demanded the reformation of 
the Government. Being shut out of London, he 
encamped at Dartford, and the Royal army en- 
camped at Blackheath. According as either 
j side triumphed, the Duke of York was arrested, 
| or the Duke of Somerset was arrested. The 
trouble ended, for the moment, in the Duke 
of York renewing his oath of allegiance, and 
going in peace to one of his own castles. 

Half a year afterward the Queen gave -bjrth 
to a son, who was very ill received by the peo- 
ple, and not believed to be the son of the King. 
It shows the Duke of York to have been a mod- 
' erate man, unwilling to involve England in new 
troubles, that he did not take advantage of the 
I general discontent at this time, but really acted 
for the public good. He was made a member 
of the Cabinet, aud the King being now so 
much worse that he could not be carried about 
and shown to the people with any decency, the 
'■ Duke was made Lord Protector of the kingdom 
1 until the King should recover, or the Prince 
should come of age. At the same time, the 
Duke of Somerset was committed to the Tower. 
So, now the Duke of Somerset was down, and 
the Duke of York was up. By the end of the 
year, however, the King recovered his memory 
and some spark of sense; upon which the Queen 
used her power — which recovered with him — to 
get the Protector disgraced, and her favorite 
released. So, now the Duke of York was down, 
and the Duke of Somerset was up. 

These ducal ups and downs gradually sepa- 
rated the whole nation int» the two parties of 
J York and Lancaster, and led to those terrible 
civil wars long known as the Wars of the Red 
and White Roses, because the red rose was the 
badge of the House of Lancaster, and the white 
rose was the badge of the House of "Y ork. 

The Duke of York, joined by some other 
powerful noblemen of the White Rose party, 
and leading a small army, met the King with 
J another small army at St. Albans, and demand- 
ed that the Duke of Somerset should be given 



up. The poor King, being made to say in an- 
swer that he would sooner die, was instantly 
attacked. The Duke of Somerset was killed, 
and the King himself was wounded in the neck, 
and took refuge in the house of a poor tanner. 
Whereupon, the Duke of York went to him. led 
him with great submission to the Abbey, and 
said he was very sorry for what had happened. 
Having now the King in his possession, he got 
a Parliament summoned, and himself once more 
made Protector, but only for a few months; for, 
on the King getting a little better again, the 
Queen and her party got him into their posses- 
sion, and disgraced the Duke once more. So, 
now the Duke of York was down again. 

Some of the best men in power, seeing the 
danger of these constant changes, tried even then 
to prevent the Red and the White Rose Wars. 
They brought about a great council in London, 
between the two parties. The White Roses as- 
sembled in Blackfriars, the Red Roses in White- 
friars; and some good priests communicatai be- 
tween them, and made the proceedings known 
at evening to the King and the judges. They 
ended in a peaceful agreement that there should 
be no more quarreling; and there was a great 
Royal procession to St. Paul's, in which the 
Queen walked arm-in-arm with her old enemy, 
the Duke of York, to show the people how 
comfortable they all were. This state of peace 
lasted half a year, when a dispute between the 
Earl of Warwick (one of the Duke's powerful 
friends) and some of the King's servants at 
court, led to an attack upon that Earl — who 
was a White Rose — and to a sudden breaking 
out of all old animosities. So, here were greater 
ups and downs than ever. 

There were even greater ups and downs than 
these soon after. After various battles, the 
Duke of York fled to Ireland, and his son the 
Earl of March to Calais, with their friends the 
Earls of Salisbury and Warwick ; and a Parlia- 
ment was held, declaring them all traitors. 
Little the worse for this, the Earl of Warwick 
presently came back, landed in Kent, was joined 
by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other 
powerful noblemen and gentlemen, engaged the. 
King's forces at Northampton, signally defeated 
them, and took the King himself prisoner, who 
was found in his tent. Warwick would have 
been glad, I dare say, to have taken the Queen 
and Prince too, but they escaped into Wales, 
and thence into Scotland. 

The King was carried by the victorious force 
straight to London, and made to call a new 
Parliament, which immediately declared that 
the Duke of York and those other noblemen 
were not traitors, but excellent subjects. Then, 
back comes the Duke from Ireland at the head 
of five hundred horsemen, rides from London 
to Westminster, and enters the House of Lords. 
There, he laid his hand upon the cloth of gold 
which covered the empty throne, as if he had 
half a mind to sit down iu it, — but he did not. On 
the Archbishop of Canterbury asking him if he 
would visit the King, who was in his palace close 
by, he replied, " I know no one in this country, 
niy lord, who ought not to visit me." None of 
the lords present spoke a single word; so, the 
Duke went out as he had come in, established 
himself royally in the King's palace, and, sis 
days afterward, sent in to the Lords a formal 
statement of his claim to the throne. The Lords 
went to the King on this momentous subject, 
and after a great deal of discussion, in which the 
judges and the other law officers were afraid to 
give an opinion on either side, the question was 
compromised. It was agreed that the present 
King should retain the crown for his life, and 
that it should then pass to the Duke of York 
and his heir's. 

But, the. resolute Queen, determined on assert- 
ing her son's right, would hear of no such thing. 
She came from Scotland to the North of Eng- 
land, where several powerful lords armed in her 
cause. The Duke of York, for his part, set olf 
with some five thousand men, a little time be- 
fore Christmas day, one thousand four hundred 
and sixty, to give her battle. He lodged at 
Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, and the Red 
Roses defied him to come out on Wakefield 
Green, and fight them then and there. His 
generals said he had best wait until his gallant 
son, the Earl of March, came up with his power; 
but, he was determined to accept the challenge. 
He did so in an evil hour. He was hotly 
pressed on all sides, two thousand of his men 
lay dead on Wakefield Green, and he himself 
was taken prisoner. They set him down in 
mock state on an ant-hill, and twisted grass 
about his head, and pretended to pay court to 
him on their knees, saying, " O King without a, 



38 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



kingdom, and Prince without a people, we hope 
your gracious Majesty is very well and happy!" 
They did worse than this; they cut his head 
off, and handed it on a pole to the Queen, who 
laughed with delight when she saw it (you rec- 
ollect their walking so religiously and comfort- 
ably to St. Paul's?) and had it fixed, with a 
paper crown upon its head, on the walls of 
York. The Earl of Salisbury lost his head, 
too; and the Duke of York's second son, a 
handsome boy who was flying with his tutor 
over Wakefield Bridge, was stabbed in the 
heart by a murderous lord — Lord Clifford by 
name — whose father had been killed by the 
White Roses in the fight at St. Al bans. There 
was awful sacrifice of life in this battle, for 
no quarter was given, and the Queen was wild 
for revenge. When men unnaturally fight 
against their own countrymen, they are always 
observed to be more unnaturally cruel, and 
filled with rage than they are against any other 
country. 

But, Lord Clifford had stabbed the second son 
of the Duke of York — not the first. The eldest 
son, Edward, Earl of March, was at Gloucester; 
and, vowing vengeance for the death of his 
father, his brother, and their faithful friends, 
Jie began to march against the Queen. He had 
to turn and fight a great body of Welsh and 
Irish first, who worried his advance. These he 
defeated in a great fight at Mortimer's Cross, 
near Hereford, where he beheaded a number of 
the Red Roses taken in battle, in retaliation for 
the beheading of the White Roses at Wakefield. 
The Queen had the next turn of beheading. 
Having moved toward London, and falling in, 
"between St. Albans and Barnet, with the Earl of 
Warwick and the Duke of Norfolk, White 
Roses both, who were there with an army to 
oppose her, and had got the King with them, she 
defeated them with great loss, and struck off the 
Leads of two prisoners of note, who were in the 
King's tent with him, and to whom the King 
Lad promised his protection. Her triumph, 
however, was very short. She had no treasure, 
and her army subsisted by plunder. This 
caused them to be hated and dreaded by the 
people, and particularly by the London people, 
.who were wealthy.- As soon as the Londoners 
heard that Edward, Earl of March, united with 
the Earl of Warwick, was advancing toward 
the city, they refused to send the Queen sup- 
plies, and made a great rejoicing. 

The Queen and her men retreated with all 
speed, and Edward and Warwick came on, 
greeted with loud acclamations on every side. 
The courage, beauty, and virtues of young Ed- 
ward could not be sufficiently praised by the 
whole people. He rode into London like a 
conqueror, and met with an enthusiastic wel- 
come. A few days afterward, Lord Falcon- 
bridge and the Bishop of Exeter assembled the 
citizens in St. John's field, Clerkenwell, and 
asked them if they would have Henry of Lan-" 
caster for their King? To this they all roared, 
"No, no, no!" and "King Edward! King 
Edward!" Then, said those noblemen, would 
they love and serve young Edward ? To this 
they all cried, " Yes, yes!" and threw up their 
caps, and clapped their hands, and cheered tre- 
mendously. 

Therefore, it was declared that, by joining 
the Queen and not protecting those two prison- 
ers of note, Henry of Lancaster had forfeited 
the crown; and Edward of York was pro- 
claimed King. He made a great speech to the 
applauding people at Westminster, and sat 
down as sovereign of England on that throne, 
on the golden covering of which his father — 
worthy of a better fate than the bloody ax 
which cut the thread of so many lives in Eng- 
land, through so many years — had laid his 
Land. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE FOURTH. 

King Edward the Fourth was not quite 
twenty-one years of age when he took that un- 
quiet seat upon the throne of England. The 
Lancaster party, the Red Roses, were then as- 
sembling in great numbers near York, and it 
was necessary to give them battle instantly. 
But, the stout Earl of Warwick leading for the 
young King, and the young King himself close- 
ly following him, and the English people 
crowding round the Royal standard, the While 
and the Red Roses met, on a wild March day 
when the snow was falling heavily, at Towton ; 
and there such a furious battle raged bel ween 
them, that the total loss amounted to forty thou- 



sand men — all Englishmen, fighting upon En- ! 
glish ground, against one another. The young j 
King gained the day, took down the heads of 
his father and brother from the walls of York, 
and put up 'the heads of some of the most fa- 
mous noblemen engaged in the battle on the 
other side. Then, he went to London, and was 
crowned with great splendor. 

A new Parliament met. No fever than one 
hundred and fifty of the principal noblemen and 
gentlemen on the Lancaster side were declared 
traitors, and the King — who had very little hu- 
manity, though he was handsome in person and 
agreeable in manners— resolved to do all he 
could to pluck up the Red Rose root and branch. 

Queen Margaret, however, was still active for 
her 'young son. She obtained help from Scot- 
land and from Normandy, and took several im- 
portant English castles. But, Warwick soon 
retook them; the Queen lost all her treasure on 
board ship in a great storm ; and both she and 
her son suffered great misfortunes. Once, in 
the winter weather, as they were riding through 
a forest, they were attacked and plundered by a 
party of robbers; and when they had escaped 
from these men, and were passing alone and on 
foot through a thick dark part of the wood, 
they came, all at once, upon another robber. 
So the Queen, with a stout heart, took the little 
Prince by the hand, and, going straight up to 
that robber, said to him, "My friend, this is the 
young son of your lawful, King! I confide -him 
to your care. " The robber was surprised, but 
took the boy in his arms, and faithfully re- 
stored him and his mother to their friends. In 
the end, the Queen's soldiers being beaten and 
dispersed, she went abroad again, and kept 
quiet for the present. 

Now, all this time, the deposed King Henry 
was concealed by a Welsh knight, who kept 
him close in his castle. But, next year, the 
Lancaster part}' recovering their spirits, raised 
a large body of men, and called him out of his 
retirement, to put him at their head. They were 
joined by some powerful noblemen who had 
sworn fidelity to the new King, but who were 
ready, as. usual , to break their oaths, whenever 
they thought there was anything to be got by it. 
One of the worst things in the history of the 
war of the Red and White Roses is the ease 
with which these noblemen, who should have 
set an example of honor to the people, left 
either side as they took slight offense, or were 
disappointed in their greedy expectations, and 
joined the other. Well! Warwick's brother 
-soon beat the Lancastrians, and the false noble- 
men, being taken, were beheaded without a mo- 
ment's loss of time. The deposed King had a 
narrow escape; three, of his servants were 
taken, and one of them bore his cap of estate, 
which was set with pearls and embroidered with 
two golden crowns. However, the head to 
which the cap belonged got safely into Lanca- 
shire, and lay pretty quietly there (the people in 
the secret being very true) for more than a year. 
At length, an old monk gave such intelligence 
as led to Henry's being taken while he was sit- 
ting at dinner in a place called Waddington 
Hall. He was immediately sent to London, and 
met at Islington by the Earl of Warwick, by 
whose directions he was put upon a horse, with 
his legs tied under it, and paraded three times 
round the pillory. Then, he was carried off to 
the Tower, where thej r treated him well enough. 

The White Rose being so triumphant, the 
young King abandoned himself entirely to 
pleasure, and led a jovial life. But thorns 
were springing up under his bed of roses, as he 
soon found out. For, having been privately 
married to Elizabeth Woodville, a young widow 
lady, very beautiful and very captivating; and 
at last resolving to make his secret known, and 
to declare her his Queen ; he gave some offense 
to the Earl of Warwick, who was usually called 
the King-Maker, because of his power and in- 
fluence, and because of his having lent such 
great help to placing Edward on the throne. 
This offense was not lessened by the jealous}' 
with which the Nevil family (the Earl of War- 
wick's) regarded the promotion of the Wood- 
ville famify. For, the young Queen was so 
bent on providing for her relations, that she 
made her father an Earl and a great officer of 
state ; married her five sisters to young eoble- 
men of the highest rank ; and provided for her 
younger brother, a young man of twenty, by 
marrying him to an immensely rich old duchess 
of eighty. The Earl of Warwick took all this 
pretty graciously for a man of his proud tem- 
per, until the question arose to whom the King's 
sister, Margaret, should be married. The Earl 
of Warwick said, ' ' To one of the French King's 



sons," and was allowed to go over to the French 
King to make friendly proposals for that pur- 
pose, and to bold all manner of friendly inter- 
views with him. But, while he was so engaged, 
the Woodville party married the young lady to 
the Duke of Burgundy! Upon this he came 
back in great rage and scorn, and shut himself 
up discontented in his Castle of Middleham. 

A reconciliation, though not a very sincere 
one, was patched up between the Earl of War- 
wick and the King, and lasted until the Earl 
married his daughter, against the King's wishes, 
to the Duke of Clarence. While the marriage 
was being celebrated at Calais, the people in the 
North of England, where the influence of the 
Nevil family was strongest, broke out into re- 
bellion: their complaint was, that England was 
oppressed and plundered by the Woodville fam- 
ily, whom they demanded to have removed from 
power. As they were joined by great numbers 
of people, and as they openly declared that they 
were supported by the Earl of Warwick, the 
King did not know what to do. At last, as he 
wrote to the Earl beseeching his aid, he and his 
new son-in-law came over to England, and be- 
gan to arrange the business t>y shutting the 
King up in Middleham Castle in the safe keep- 
ing of the Archbishop of York ; so England was 
not only in the strange position of having two 
Kings at once, but they were both prisoners at 
the same time. 

Even as yet, however, the King-Maker was 
so far true to the King that he dispersed a new 
rising of the Lancastrians, Wok their leader 
prisoner, and brought him 1o the Kiug, who 
ordered him to be immediately executed. He 
presently allowed the King to return to London, 
and there innumerable pledges of forgiveness 
and friendship were exchanged between them, 
and between theNevilsand the Woodvilles; the 
King's eldest, daughter was promised in mar- 
riage to the heir of the Nevil family; and more 
friendly oaths were sworn, and more friendly 
promises made, than this book would hold. 

They lasted about three months. At the end 
of that time, the Archbishop of "i'ork made a 
feast for the King, the Earl of Warwick, and 
the Duke of Clarence at his house, the Moor, in 
Hertfordshire. The King was washing his 
hands before supper, when some one whispered 
him that a body of a hundred men were lying 
in ambush outside the house. Whether this 
were true or untrue, the King took fright, 
mounted his horse, and rode through the dark 
night to Windsor Castle. Another reconcilia- 
tion was patched up between him and the King- 
Maker, but it was a short one. and it was the 
last. A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, 
and the King marched to repress it. Having 
done so, he proclaimed that both the Earl of 
Warwick and the Duke of Clarence were trai- 
tors, who had secretly assisted it, and who had 
been prepared publicly to join it on the follow- 
ing day. In these dangerous circumstances 
they both took ship, and sailed away to the 
French court. 

And here a meeting took place between the 
Earl of Warwick and his old enemy, the 
Dowager Queen Margaret, through whom his 
father had had his head struck off, and to 
whom he had been a bitter foe. But now, when 
he said that he had done with the ungrateful 
and perfidious Ed waid of York, and that hence- 
forth he devoted himself to the restoration of 
the House of Lancaster, either in the person of 
her husband or of her little son, she embraced 
him as if he had ever been her dearest friend. 
She did more than that ; she married her son to 
his second daughter, the Lady A.nne. However 
agreeable this marriage was to the new friends, 
it was very disagreeable to the Duke of Clar- 
ence, who perceived that his father-in-law, the 
King-Maker, would never make him King now. 
So, "being but a weak-minded young traitor, 
possessed of very little worth or sense, he 
readily listened to an artful court lady sent 
over for the purpose, and promised to turn 
traitor once more, and go over to his brother, 
King Edward, when a fitting opportunity 
should come. 

The Earl of Warwick, knowing nothing of 
this, soon redeemed his promise to the Dowager 
Queen Margaret, by invading England and 
landing at Plymouth, where he instantly pro- 
claimed King Henry, and summoned all En- 
glishmen between the ages of sixteen and sixty 
to join his banner. Then, with his army in- 
creasing as he marched along, he went north- 
ward, and came so near King Edward, who 
was in that part of the country, that Edward 
had to ride hard for it to the coast of Norfolk, 
and thence to get away, in such ships as he 



i 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



39 



could find, to Holland. Thereupon, the tri- 
umphant King-Maker and his false son-in-law, 
the Duke of Clarence, went to London, took 
the old King out of the Tower, and walked 
liiin in a great procession to St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral, with the crown upon his head. This did 
not improve the temper of the Duke of Clar- 
ence, who saw himself further off from being 
King than ever; but he kept his secret, and said 
nothing. The Nevil family were restored to all 
their honors and glories, and the Woodvilles 
and the rest were disgraced. The King-Maker, 
less sanguinary than the King, shed no blood ex- 
cept that of the Earl of Worcester, who had 
been so cruel to the people as to have gained the 
title of the Butcher Him they caught hidden 
in a tree, and him they tried and executed. No 
other death stained the King-Maker's triumph. 

To dispute this triumph, back came King 
Edward again next year, landing at Ravenspur, 
coming on" to York, causing all his men to cry 
" Long live King Henry!" and swearing on the 
altar, without a blush, that he came to lay no 
claim to the crown. Now was the time for the 
Duke of Clarence, who ordered his men to as- 
sume the White Rose-, and declare for his 
brother. The Marquis of Montague, though 
the Earl of Warwick's brother, also declining 
to fight against King Edward, he went on suc- 
cessfully to Londou'where the Archbishop of 
York let him into the City, and where the peo- 
ple made great demonstrations in his favor. 
For this they had four reasons. Firstly, there 
were great numbers of the King's adherents 
hiding in the Cit}', and ready to break out; 
secondly, the King owed them a great deal of 
money, which they could never hope to get if 
be were unsuccessful; thirdly, there was a 
young Prince to inherit the crown ; and fourth- 
ly, the King was gay and handsome, and more 
popular than a better man might have been 
with the City ladies. After a stay of only two 
days with these worthy supporters, the King 
marched out to Bamet Common, to give the 
Earl of Warwick battle. And now it was to be 
seen, for the last time, whether the King or the 
King-Maker was to carry the day. 

While the battle was yet pending, the faint- 
hearted Duke of Clarence began to repent, and 
sent over secret messages to hisfather-in-law, 
offering his services in meditation with the 
King. But, the Earl of Warwick disdainfully 
rejected them, and replied that Clarence was 
false and perjured, and that he would settle the 
quarrel by the sword. The battle began at 
four o'clock in the morning, and lasted until 
ten, and during the greater part of the time it 
was fought in a thick mist — absurdly supposed 
to be raised by a magician. The loss of life 
■was very great, for the hatred was strong on 
both sides. The King-Maker was defeated, 
and the King triumphed. Both the Earl of 
Warwick and his brother were slain, and their 
bodies fay in St. Paul's for some days, as a 
spectacle to the people. 

Margaret's spirit was not broken even by this 
great blow. Within five days she was in arms 
again, and raised her standard in Bath, whence 
she set off with her army, to try and join Lord 
Pembroke, who had a force in Wales. But the 
King, coming up with her outside the town of 
Tewkesbury, and ordering his brother, the 
Duke of Gloucester, who was a brave soldier, to 
attack her men, she sustained an entire defeat, 
and was taken prisoner, together with her son. 
now only eighteen years of age. The conduct 
of the King to this poor youth was worthy of 
his cruel character. He ordered him to be led 
into his tent. " And what, " said he, "brought 
you to England?" "1 came to England," re- 
plied the prisoner, with a spirit which a man of 
spirit might have admired in a captive, " to re- 
cover my father's kingdom, which descended to 
him as his right, and from him descends to me 
as mine." The King, drawing off his iron 
gauntlet, struck him with it in the face; and 
the Duke of Clarence, and some other lords 
who were there, drew their noble swords, and 
killed him. 

His mother survived him, a prisoner, for Bve 
years; after her ransom by the "King of France, 
she survived for six years more. Within three 
weeks of this murder, Henry died one of those 
convenient sudden deaths which were so com- 
mon in the Tower; in plainer words, he was 
murdered by the King's order. 

Having no particular excitement on his hands 
after this great defeat of the Lancaster party, 
and being, perhaps, desirous to get rid of some 
of his fat (for he was now getting too corpu- 
lent to be handsome), the King thought of mak- 
ing war on France. As he wanted more money 



for this purpose than the Parliament could 
give him, though they were usually ready 
enough for war, he iuvented a new way of rais- 
ing it, by sending for the prihcpal citizens of 
London, and telling them, with a grave face, 
that he was very much in want of cash, and 
would take it very kind in them if they would 
lend him some. It being impossible for them 
safely to refuse, they complied, and the moneys 
thus forced from them were called — no doubt to 
the great amusement of the King and the court 
— as if they tvere free gifts, "Benevolences." 
What with grants from Parliament, and what 
with Benevolences, the King raised an army, 
and passed over to Calais. As nobody wanted 
war, however, the -French King made pro- 
posals of peace, which were accepted, and a 
truce was concluded for seven long years. The 
proceedings between the Kings of France and 
England on this occasion were very friendly, 
very splendid, and very distrustful. They 
finished with a meeting between the two Kings, 
on a temporaray bridge over the river Somme, 
where they embraced through two holes in a 
strong wooden grating like a lion's cage, and 
made several bows and fine speeches to one an- 
other. 

It was time, now, that the Duke of Ciarence 
should be punished for his treacheries; and 
Fate had his punishment in store. He was, 
probably, not trusted by the King — for who 
could trust him .who knew him? — and he had 
certainly a powerful opponent in his brother 
Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, being ava- 
ricious and ambitious, wanted to marry that 
widowed daughter of the Earl of Warwick's 
who had been espoused to the deceased young 
Prince at Calais. Clarence, who wanted all 
the family wealth for himself, secreted this 
'lady, whom Richard found disguised as a 
servant in the city of London, and whom he 
married; arbitrators appointed by the King, then 
divided the property between the brothers. 
This led to ill will and mistrust between them. 
Clarence's wife dying, and he wishing to make 
another marriage, which was obnoxious to the 
King, his ruin was hurried by that means, too. 
At first, the Court struck at his retainers and 
dependents, and accused some of them of magic 
and witchcraft, and -similar nonsense. Suc- 
cessful against this small game, it then mounted 
to the Duke himself, who was impeached by 
his brother the King, in person, on a variety 
of such charges. He was found guilty, and sen- 
tenced to be publicly executed. He never was 
publicly executed, but he met his death some- 
how, in the Tower, and, no doubt, through 
some agency of the King or his brother Glou- 
cester, or both. It was supposed at the time 
that he was told to choose the manner of his 
death, and that he chose to be drowned in a 
butt of Malmsey wine. I hope the story may 
be true, for it would have been a becoming- 
death for such a miserable creature. 

The King survived him some five years. He 
died in the forty-second year of his life, and 
the twenty-third of his reign. He had a 
very good capacity, and some good points, but 
he was selfish, careless, sensual, and cruel. He 
was a favorite with the people for his showy 
manners; and the people were a good example 
to him in the constancy of their attachment. 
He was penitent on his death-bed for his " be- 
nevolences" and other extortions, and ordered 
rest'tution to be made to the people who had 
suffered from them. He also called about his 
bed the enriched members of the Woodville 
family, and the proud lords whose honors were 
of older date, and endeavored to reconcile them, 
for the sake of the peaceful succession of his 
son and the tranquillity of England. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

ENGLAKD TTN T DER EDWARD THE FIFTH. 

The late King's eldest son, the Prince of 
Wales, called Edward after him. was only thir- 
teen years of age at his father's death. He was 
at Ludlow Castle with his uncle, the Earl of 
Rivers. The Prince's brother, the Duke of 
York, only eleven years of age, was in London 
with his, mother. The boldest, most crafty, 
and most dreaded nobleman in England at that 
time was their uncle Richard, Duke of Glou- 
cester, and everybody wondered how the two 
poor boys would fare with such an uncle for a 
friend or a foe. 

The Queen, their mother, being exceedingly- 
uneasy about this, was anxious that instruc- 
tions should be sent to Lord Rivers to raise an 



army to escort the young King safely to Lon- 
don. But Lord Hastings, who was of the 
court party opposed to the Woodvilles, and 
who disliked the thought of giving them that 
power, argued against the proposal and obligi d 
the Queen to be satisfied with an escort of I 
thousand horse. The Duke of Gloucester (lid 
nothing, at first, to justify suspicion. He 
came from Scotland (where he was command- 
ing an army) to York, and was there Ihe first 
to swear allegiance to his nephew. He then 
wrote a condoling letter to the Queen-Mother, 
and set off to "be present at the coronation in 
London. 

Now, the young King, journeying toward 
London too, with Lord Rivers and Lord Gray. 
came to Stony Stratford, as his uncle came to 
Northampton, about ten miles distant; and, 
when those two lords heard that the Duke of 
Gloucester was so near, they proposed to the 
young King that they should go back and 
greet him in his name. The boy being very 
willing that they should do so, they rode off, 
and were received with great friendliness, ami 
asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay and 
dine with him. In the evening, while they 
were merry together, up came "the Duke of 
Buckingham with three hundred horsemen ; and 
next mciruing the two lords and the two dukes, 
and the three hundred horsemen, rode away 
together to rejoin the King. Just as they were 
entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Glou- 
cester, checking his horse, turned suddenly on 
thejtwo lords, charged them with alienating from 
him the affections of his sweet nephew, and 
caused them to be arrested by the three hun- 
dred horsemen, and taken back. Then, he and 
the Duke of Buckingham went straight (o the 
King (whom they had now in their power), to 
whom they made a show of kueeling down, 
and offering great love and submission; and 
then they ordered his attendants to disperse, 
and took him, alone with them, to Northamp- 
ton. 

A few days afterward they conducted him to 
London, and lodged him in the Bishop's Palace. 
But he did not remain there long; for, the 
Duke of Buckinham with a tender face made a 
speech expressing how anxious he was for the 
Royal boy's safety, and how much safer he 
would be in the Tower until his coronation 
than he could be anywhere else. So, to the 
Tower he was taken very carefully, and the 
Duke of Gloucester was named Protector of the 
State. 

Although Gloucester had proceeded Urns far 
with a very smooth countenance —and although 
he w^is a clever man, fair of speech, and not ill 
looking, in spite of one of his shoulders being 
something higher than the other — and although 
he had come into the City riding bareheaded at 
the King's side, and looking very fond of him 
— he had made the King's mother more uneasy 
yet; and, when the Royal boy was taken to the 
Tower, she became so alarmed that she took 
sanctuary in Westminster with her five daugh- 
ters. 

Nor did she do this without reason, for the 
Duke of Gloucester, finding that the lords who 
were opposed to the Woodville family, were 
faithful to the young King nevertheless, quick- 
ly resolved to strike a blow for himself. Ac- 
cordingly, while those lords met in Council at 
the Tower, he and those who were in his in- 
terest met in separate Council at his own resi- 
dence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street. 
Being at last cpiite prepared, he one day ap- 
peared unexpectedly at the Council in the 
Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and 
merry. He was particularly gay with the 
Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries that 
grew in his garden on Holborh Hill, and asking 
him to have some gathered that he might eat 
them at dinner. The Bishop, quite proud of 
the honor, sent one of his men to fetch some; 
and the Duke, still very jocular and gay, went 
out; and the Council all said what a very 
agreeable Duke he was! In a little time, how- 
ever, he came back quite altered — not at all 
jocular — ■ frowning and fierce — and suddenly 
said: 

"What do those persons deserve who have 
compassed my destruction ; I being the King's 
lawful, as well as natural, protector? 

To this strange question, Lord Hastings re- 
plied that they deserved death, whosoever they 
were. 

" Then," said the Duke. "1 tell you that they 
are that sorceress, my brother's wife," mean- 
ing the Queen; " and' that other sorceress, Jane 
Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have withered my 



40 



A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ESGLAKD. 



body, and caused my arm to shrink as I now 
show you." 

Be then pulled up his sleeve and showed 
them his arm, which was shrunken, it is true, 
■but which had been so, as they all very well 
knew, from the hour of his birth. 

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord 
Hastings, as she had formerly been of the 
late King, that lord knew that he himself was 
attacked. So he said, in some confusion, " Cer- 
tainly, my lord, if they have done this, they be 
■worthy of punishment." 

"If!" said the Duke of Gloucester. "Do 
you talk to me of it's? I tell you that they have 
so done, and 1 will make it good upon thy bo,dy, 
thou traitor!" 

With that, he struck the table a great blow 
with his fist. This was a signal to some of his 
people outside to cry " Treason ! " They im- 
mediately did so, and there was a rush into the 
chamber of so many armed men that it was 
filled in a moment. 

"First," said the Duke of Gloucester to 
Lord Hastings, " I arrest thee, traitor! And let 
him," he added to the armed men who took 
iiim, ' ' have a priest at once, for by St. Paul 1 
will not dine until I have seen his head off!" 

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by 
the Tower chapel, and there beheaded on a log 
of wood that happened to he lying on the 
ground. Then, the Duke dined with a good 
appetite, and after dinner summoning the 
principal citizens to attend him, told them that 
Lord Hastings and the rest had designed to 
murder both himself and the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, who stood by his side, if he had not 
providentially discovered their design. He 
requested them to be so obliging as to inform 
their fellow citizens of the truth of what he 
said, and issued a proclamation (prepared and 
neatly copied_out beforehand) to the same effect. 

On the same day that the Duke did these 
things in the Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the 
boldest and most undaunted of his men, went 
down to Pontefract; arrested Lord Rivers, Lord 
Grey, and two other gentlemen; and publicly 
■executed them on the scaffold, without any trial, 
for having intended the Duke's death. Three 
days afterward the Duke, not to lose time, went 
down the river to Westminster in his barge, at- 
tended by divers bishops, lords, and soldiers, 
and demanded that the Queen should deliver her 
second son, the Duke of "York, into his safe 
keeping. The Queen, being obliged to comply, 
resigned the child after she had wect over him; 
and Richard of Gloucester placed him with his 
brother in the Tower. Then, he seized Jane 
Shore, and, because she had been the lover of 
the late King, confiscated her property, and got 
her sentenced to do public penance in the streets 
by walking in a scanty dress, with bare feet, and 
carrying a lighted candle, to St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral, through the most crowded part of the 
City. 

Having now all things ready for his own ad- 
vancement, he caused a friar to preach a ser- 
mon at the cross which stood in front of St. 
Paul's Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the 
profligate manners of the late King, and upon 
the late shame of Jane shore, and hinted that 
the Princes were not his children. " Whereas, 

food people," said the friar, whose name was 
haw, " my Lord the Protector, the noble Duke 
of Gloucester, that sweet Prince, the pattern of 
all the noblest virtues, is the perfect ima«e and 
express likeness of his father. " There had been 
a little plot between the Duke and the friar, that 
the Duke should appear in the crowd at this 
moment, when it was expected that the people 
"would cry "Long live King Richard ! " But, 
either through the friar saying the words too 
soon, or through the Duke's coming too late, the 
Duke and the words did not come together, and 
the people only laughed, and the friar sneaked 
off ashamed. 

The Duke of Buckingham was a better hand 
at such business than the friar, so he went to 
the Guildhall the next day, and addressed the 
citizens in the Lord Protector's behalf. A few 
dirty men, who had been hired and stationed 
there for the purpose, crying when he had 
done, " God save King Richard!" he made 
them a great bow, and thanked them with all 
his heart. Next day, to make an end of it, he 
went with the Mayor and some lords and citi- 
zens to Bayard Castle, by the river, where Rich- 
ard then was, and read an address, humbly en- 
treating him to accept the crown of England. 
Richard, who looked down upon them out of a 
window, and pretended to be in great uneasi- 
ness and alarm, assured them there was nothing 
he desired less, and that his deep affection for 



his nephews forbade him to 'think of it. To 
this the Duke of Buckingham replied, with pre- 
tended warmth, thai the free people of England 
would never submit to his nephew's rule, and 
| that if Richard, who was the lawful heir, refused 
|lhe crown, why I hen they must find some one 
j else to wear it. The Duke of Gloucester re- 
turned, that since he used that strong language, 
: it became his painful duty to think no more of 
j himself, and to accept the crown. 

Upon that, the people cheered and dispersed; 
and the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of 
Buckingham passed a pleasant evening, talking 
over the play they had just acted with so much 
success, and every word of which they had pre- 
pared together. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER RICHARD THE THIRD. 

King Richard the Third was up betimes 
in the morning, and went to Westminster Hall. 
In the Hall was a marble seat, upon which he 
sat himself down between two great noblemen, 
and told the people that he began the new reign 
in that place, because the first duty of a sover- 
eign was to administer (he laws equally to all, 
the to maintain jusiioe. He then maunted his 
horse and rode back to the City, where he was 
received by the clergy and the' crowd as if he 
really had a right to the throne, and really were 
a just man. The clergy and the crowd must 
have been rather ashamed of themselves in se- 
cret, I think, for being such poor-spirited 
knaves. 

The new King and his Queen were soon 
crowned with a great deal of show and uoise, 
which the people liked very much; and then 
the King set forth on a Royal progress through 
his dominions. He was crowned a second time 
at York, in order that the people might have 
show and noise enough; and wherever he went 
was received wilh shouts of rejoicing — from a 
good many people of strong lungs, who were 
paid to strain theii throats in crying' " God 
save King Richard!" The plan was so success- 
ful that I am told it has been imitated since, by 
other usurpers, in other progresses through 
other dominions. 

While he was on this journey, King Richard 
stayed a week at Warwick. And from War- 
wick he sent instruclions home for one of the 
wickedest murders that ever was done — the mur- 
der of the two young Princes, his nephews, who 
were shut up in (he Tower of London. 

Sir Robert Brackenbury was at that time 
Governor of the Tower. To him, by the hands 
of a messenger named John Green, did King 
Richard send a letter, ordering him by some 
means to put the two young Princes to death. 
But Sir Robert — I hope because he had children 
of his own, and loved them — sent John Green 
back again, riding and spurring along the dusty 
roads, with the answer that he could not do so 
horrible a piece of work. The King, having 
frowningly considered a little, called to him Sir 
James Tyrrel, his master of the horse, and to 
him gave authority to take command of the 
Tower, whenever he would, for twenty-four 
hours, and to keep all the keys of the Tower 
during that space of time. Tyrrel, well know- 
ing what was wanted, looked about him for two 
hardened ruffians, and chose John Dighton, one 



of his own grooms, and Miles Forest, who was a 
murderer by trade. Having secured these two 
assistants, he went, upon a day in August, to 
the Tower, showed his authority from the King, 
took the command for four-and-twenty hours, 

1 and obtained possession of the keys. And, 

1 when the black night came, he went creeping, 
creeping like a guilty villain as he was, up the 

J dark stone winding stairs, and along the dark 
stone passages, until he came to 1he door of Ihe 

j room where the two young Princes, having said 
their prayers, lay fast asleep, clasped in each oth- 

' er's arms. And, while he watched and listened at 
the door, he sent in those evil demons, John 

j Dighton and Miles Forest, who smothered the 
two Princes with the bed and pillows, and car- 
ried their bodies down the stairs, and buried 
them under a great heap of stones at tne stair- 
case foot. And, when the day came, he gave 
up the command of the Tower, and restored 
the keys, and hurried away without once look- 
ing behind him; and Sir Robert Brackenbury 
went with fear and sadness to the Princes' room, 
and found the Princes gone forever. 

You know, through all this history, how true 
it is that traitors are never true, and you will 
not be surprised to learn that the Duke of Buck- 
ingham soon turned against Richard, and -joined 



a great conspiracy that was formed to dethrone 
him, and to place the crown upon its rightful 
owner's head. Richard had meant to keep the 
murder secret; but when he heard through his 
spies that this conspiracy existed, and that many 
lords and gentlemen drank in secret to the 
healths of the two young Princes in the Tower, 
he made it known that they were dead. The 
conspirators, though thwarted for a moment, 
soon resolved to set up for the crown, against 
the murderous Richard, Henry, Earl of Rich- 
mond, grandson of Catherine: that widow of 
Henry the Fifth who married Owen Tudor. 
And, as Henry was of the House of Lancaster, 
they proposed that he should marry the Princess 
Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of the late King, 
now the heiress of the House of York, and 
thus, by uniting the rival families, put an end 
to the fatal wars of the Red and White Roses. 
All being settled, a time was appointed for 
Henry to come over from Brittany, and for a 
great rising against Richard to take place in 
several parts of England at the same hour. On 
a certain day, therefore, in October, the revolt 
took place; but unsuccessfully. Richard was 
prepared, Henry was driven back at sea by a 
storm, his followers in England were dispersed, 
and the Duke of Buckingham was taken, and 
at once beheaded in the market-place at Salis- 
bury. 

The time of his success was a good time, Rich- 
ard thought, for summoning a Parliament and 
getting some money. So a Parliament was 
called, and it flatteredand fawned upon him as 
much as he could possibly desire, and declared 
him to be the rightful King of England, and his 
only son Edward, then eleven years of age, the 
next heir to the throne. 

Richard knew full well that, let the Parlia- 
ment say what it would, the Princess Elizabeth 
was remembered by people as the heiress of the 
House of York ; and having accurate information 
besides, of its being designed by the conspirators 
to marry her to Henry of Richmond, he felt 
that it would much strengthen him, and weaken 
them, to be beforehand with them, and marry 
her to his son. With this view he went to the 
Sanctuary at 'Westminster, where the late King's 
widow and her daughter still were, and besought 
them to come to court; where (he swore by any- 
thing and everything) they should be safely and 
honorably entertained. They came according- 
ly, but had scarcely been at court a month when 
his son died suddenly — or was poisoned — and 
his plan was crushed to pieces. 

In this extremity, King Richard, always 
active, thought, ' ' I must make another plan. ' ' 
And he made the plan of marrying the Princess 
Elizabeth himself, although she was his niece. 
There was one difficulty in the way: his wife, 
the Queen Anne, was alive. But, he knew (re- 
membering his nephews) how to remove that 
obstacle, and he made love to the Princess Eliza- 
beth, telling her he felt perfectly confident that 
the Queen would die in February. The Prin- 
cess was not a very scrupulous young lady, for, 
instead of rejecting the murderer of her brothers 
with scorn and hatred, she openly declared she 
loved him dearly; and, when February came 
and the Queen did not die, she expressed her 
impatient opinion thai she was too long about 
it. However, King Richard was not so far out 
in his prediction, but that she died in March — 
he took good care of that — and then this pre- 
cious pair hoped to be married. But they were 
disappointed, for the idea of such a marriage 
was so unpopular in the country that the King's 
chief counselors, Ratcliffe and Catesby, would 
by no means undertake to propose it, and the 
King was even obliged to declare in public that 
he had never thought of such a thing. 

He was, by this time, dreaded and hated by 
all classes of his subjects. His nobles deserted 
every day to Henry's side; he dared not call 
another Parliament, lest his crimes should be 
denounced there; and, for want of money, he 
was obliged to get Benevolences from the citi- 
zens, which exasperated them all against him. 
It was said, too, that, being stricken by his con- 
science, he dreamed frightful dreams, and start- 
ed up in the nighttime, wild with terror and 
remorse. Active to the last, through all this, 
he issued vigorous proclamations against Henry 
of Richmond and all his followers, when he 
heard that they were coming against him with 
a fleet from France ; and took the field as fierce 
and savage as a wild boar — the animal repre- 
sented on his shield. 

Henry of Richmond landed with six thousand 
men at Milford Haven, and came on against 
King Richard, then encamped at Leicester with 
an army twice as great, through North Wales. 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



41 



On Bosworth Field the two armies met; and went over to Ireland; and, at Dublin, enlisted 
Richard, looking along Henry's ranks, and see- in their cause all ranks of the people: who seem 
ing them crowded with the English nobles who to have been generous enough, but exceedingly 
had abandoned him, turned pale when he beheld i irrational. The Earl of Kildare, the Governor 
I lie powerful Lord Stanley and his son (whom | of Ireland, declared that he believed the boy to 
he had tried hard to retain") among them. Cut, be what the priest represented; and the boy, 
lie was as brave as he was wicked, and plunged I who had been well tutored by the priest, told 



into the thickest of the fight. He was riding 
hither arid thither, laying about him in all direc- 
tions, when he observed the Earl of Northum- 
berland — one of his few great allies — to stand 
inactive, and the main body of his troops to 
hesitate. At the same moment, bis desperate 
glance caught Henry of Richmond among a Ut- 
ile group of his knights. Riding hard at him, 
and crying " Treason!" he killed his standard- 
bearer, fiercely unhorsed another gentleman, 
and aimed a powerful stroke at Henry himself, 
to cut him down. But, Sir William Stanley 
parried it as#it fell, and before Richard could 
raise his arm again, he was borne down in a 
press of numbers, unhorsed, and killed. Lord 
Stanley picked up the crown, all bruised and 
trampled, and stained with blood, and put it 
upon Richmond's head, amid loud and rejoicing 
cries of " Long live King Heuiyl" 

That night a horse was led up to the church 
of the Gray Priars at Leicester; across whose 
back was tied, like some worthless sack, a naked 
body brought there for burial. It'was the body 
of the last of the Plantagenet liae, King Rich- 
ard the Third, usurper and murderer, slain at 
the battle of Bosworth Field in the thirty-second 
year of his age, after a reign of two years. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SEVENTH. 



King Henry ths Seventh did not turn out 
to be as fine a fellow as the nobility and people 
hoped, in the first joy of their deliverance from 
Richard the Third,. He was very cold, crafty, 
and calculating, and would do almost anj'thing 
for money. He possessed considerable ability, 
but his chief merit appears to have been that he 
was not cruel when there was nothing to be got 
by it. 

The new King had promised the nobles who 
had espoused his cause that he would marry the 
Princess Elizabeth. The first thing he did was, 
to direct her to he removed from the Castle of 
Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire, where Richard 
had placed her, and restored to the care of her 
mother in London. The young Earl of War- 
wick, Edward Plantagenet, son and heir of the 
late Duke of Clarence, had been kept a prisoner 
in the same old Yorkshire castle with her. This 
boy, who was now fifteen, the new King placed 
in the Tower for safety. Then he came^to Lon- 
don in great state, and gratified the people with 
a fine procession; on which kind af show he 
often very much relied for keeping them in 
good humor. The sports and feasts which 
took place were followed by a terrible fever, 
called the Sweating Sickness; of which great 
numbers of people died. Lord Mayors and 
Aldermen are thought to have suffered most 
from it; whether because they were in the 
habit of overeating themselves, or because they 
were very jealous of preserving filth and nuis- 
ances in the City (as they have been since), 1 
don't know. 

The King's coronation was postponed on ac- 
count of the general ill-health, and he afterward 
deferred his marriage, as if he were not very 
anxious that it should take place: and, even 
after that, deferred the Queen's coronation so 
long that he gave offense to the York party. 
However, he set these things right in the end, by 1 tions all over again 



hanging some men and seizing on the rich pos- 
sessions of others; by granting more popular 
pardons to the followers of the late King than 
could, at first, begot from him; and by employ- 
ing about his court some not very scrupulous 
persons who had been employed in'thc previous 
reign. 

As this reign was principally remarkable for 
two very curious impostures which have become 
famous in history, we will make those two 
stories its principal feature. 

There was a priest at Oxford of the name of 
Simons, who had for a pupil a handsome boy 
named Lambert Simnel, the son of a baker. 
Partly to gratify his own ambitious ends, and 
partly to carry out the designs of a secret party 
formed against the King, this priest declared 
that his pupil, the boy, was no other than the 
young Earl of Warwick, who (as everybody 
might have known) was safely locked up in the 
Tower of London. The priest and the boy 



them such things of his childhood, and gave 
them so many descriptions of the Royal Family, 
that they were perpetually shouting, and hur- 
rahing, and drinking his health, and making all 
kinds of noisy and thristy demonstrations, to 
express their belief in him. Nor was this feel- 
ing confined to Ireland aloue, for the Earl of 
Lincoln — whom the late usurper had named as 
his successor — went over to the young Pretend- 
er; and, after holding a secret correspondence 
with the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy — the 
sister of Edward the Fourth, who detested the 
present King and all his race — sailed to Dublin 
with two thousand German soldiers of her pro- 
viding. In this promising state of the boy's 
fortunes, he was crowned there, with a crown 
taken off the head of a statue of the Virgin 
Mary; and was then, according to the Irish cus- 
tom of those days, carried home on the shoul- 
ders of a big chieftain possessing a great deal 
more strength than sense. Father Simons, you 
may be sure, was mighty busy at the coronation. 
Ten days afterward, the Germans, and the 
Irish, and the priest, and the boy, and the 
Earl of Lincoln, all landed in Lancashire to 
invade England. The King, who had good in- 
telligence of their movements, set up his stand- 
ard at Nottingham, where vast numbers resort- 
ed to him every day; while the Earl of Lincoln 
u could gam but very few. With his small force 
he tried to make for the town of Newark; but, 
the King's ai'my getting between him and that 
place, he had no choice but to risk a battle at 
Stoke. It soon ended m the complete destruc- 
tion of the Pretender's forces, one half of whom 
were killed; among them, the Earl himself. 
The priest and the baker's boy were taken pris- 
oners. The priest, after confessing the trick, 
was shut up in prison, where he afterward died 
— suddenly, perhaps. The boy was taken into 
the Kiug's kitchen, and made a turnspit. He 
was afterward raised to the station of one of the 
King's falconers; and so ended this strange im- 
position. 

There seems reason to suspect that the. Dow- 
ager Queen — always a restless and busy woman 
— had had some share in tutoring the baker's 
son. The King was very angry with her, 
whether or no. He seized upon her property, and 
shut her up in a convent at Bermondsey. 

One might suppose that the end of this story 
would have put the Irish people on their guard; 
but they were quite ready to receive a second 
impostor, as they had received the firsthand that 
same troublesome Duchess of Burgundy soon 
gave them the opportunity. All of a sudden 
there appeared at Cork, in a vessel arriving from 
Portugal, a young man of excellent abilities, of 
very handsome appearance and most winning 
manners, who declared himself to be Richard, 
Duke of York, the second son of King Edward 
the Fourth. "Oh," said some, even of those 
ready Irish believers, " but surely that young 
Prince was murdered by his uncle in the 
Tower!" " It is supposed so," said the engag- 
ing young man; " and my brother was killed in 
that gloomy prison; but I escaped — it don't 
matter how, at present — and have been wander- 
ing about the world for seven long years." 
This explanation being quite satisfactorj' to 
numbers of the Irish people, they began again 
to shout and to hurrah, and to drink his health, 
and to make the noisy and thirsty demonstra- 
And the big chieftain in 



Dublin began to look out for another corona- 
tion, and another young King to be carried 
home on his back 

Now, King Henry being then on bad terms 
with Prance, the French King, Charles the 
Eighth, saw that, by pretending to believe in 
the handsome young man, he could trouble his 
enemy sorely. So, he invited him over to the 
French court, and appointed him a body-guard, 
and treated him in all respects as if he really 
were the Duke of York. Peace, however, being 
soon concluded between the two Kings, trie pre- 
tended Duke was turned adrift, and" wandered 
for protection to the Duchess of Burgundy. 
She, after feigntng to inquire into the reality of 
his claims, declared him to be the very picture 
of her dear departed brother; gave him a body- 
guard at her court of thirty halberdiers: and 
called him by the sounding name of the White 
Rose of England. 

The leading members of the White Rose party 



in England sent over an agent, named Sir Rob- 
ert Clifford, to ascertain whether the White 
Rose's claims were good: the King also sent 
over his agents to inquire into the Rose's history. 
The White Roses declared the young man to be 
really the Duke of York; the King declared 
him to be Perkm Warbeck, the son of a 
merchant of the city of Tournay, who had 
acquired his knowledge of England, its lan- 
guage and maimers, from the English mer- 
chants who traded in Flanders; it was also 
staled by the Royal agents that he had been in 
the service of Lady Brompton, the wife of an 
exiled English nobleman, and that the Duchess 
of Burgundy had caused him to be trained and 
taught expressly for this deception. The King 
then required the Archduke Philip— who was 
the sovereign of Burgundy— to banish this new 
Pretender, or to deliver him up; but, as the 
Archduke replied that he could not control the 
Duchess in her own land, the King, in revenge, 
took the market of English cloth away from 
Antwerp, and prevented all commercial inter- 
course between the two countries. 

He also, by arts and bribes, prevailed on Sir 
Robert Clifford to betray his employers; and he 
denouncing several famous English noblemen as 
being secretly the friends of Perkin Warbeck, 
the King had three of the foremost executed at 
once. Whether he pardoned the remainder be- 
cause they were poor, 1 do not know ; but it is 
only too probable that he refused to pardon one 
famous nobleman against whom I he same 
Clifford soon afterward informed separately, be- 
cause he was rich. This was no other than' Sir 
William Stanley, who had saved the Kiug's life 
at the battle of Bosworth Field. It is very 
doubtful whether his treason amounted to much 
more than his having said that, if he were sure 
the young man was the Duke of York, he would, 
not take arms against him. Whatever he had 
done he admitted, like an honorable spirit; and 
he lost his head for it, and the covetous King 
gained all his wealth. 

Perkin Warbeck kept quiet for three years; 
but, as the Flemings began to complain heavily 
of the loss of their trade by the stoppage of the 
Antwerp market on his account, and as it was 
not unlikely that they might even go so far as to 
take his life, or give him up, he found it neces 
sary to do something. Accordingly, he made a 
desperate sally, and landed, with only a few 
hundred men, on the coast of Deal. But he was 
soon glad to get back to the place from whence 
he came; for the country people rose against his 
followers, killed a great many, and took a hun- 
dred and fifty prisoners: who were all driven to 
London, tied together with ropes, like a team of 
cattle. Every one of them was hanged on some 
part or other of the seashore; in order that, if 
any more men should come over with Perkin 
Warbeck, they might see the bodies as a warn- 
ing before they landed. 

Then the wary King, by making a treaty of 
commerce with the Flemings, drove Perkin 
Wai-beck out of that country; and, by com- 
pletely gaining over the Irish to his side, de- 
prived him of that asylum loo. He wandered 
away to Scotland, and told his story at, that 
court. King James the Fourth of Scotland, 
who was no friend to King Henry, and had no 
reason to be (for King Henry had bribed his 
Scotch lords to betray him more than once; but 
had never succeeded in his plots), gave him a 
great reception, called him his cousin, and gave 
him in marriage the Lady Catherine Gordon, a 
beautiful and charming creature related to the 
Royal House of Stuart. 

Alarmed by this successful reappearance of 
the Pretender, the King still undermined, and 
bought, and bribed, and kept his doings and 
Perkin Warbeck 's story in the dark, when he 
might, one would imagine, have rendered the- 
matter clear to ail England. But, for all this 
bribiug of the Scotch lords at the Scotch King's 
court, he could not procure the Pretender to be 
delivered up to him. James, though not very 
particular in many respects, would not betray "• 
him; and the ever-busy Duchess of Burgundy 
so provided him with arms, and goor" soldiers, 
and with money besides, that be had soon a 
little army of fifteen hundred men of various 
nations. With these, and aided by the Scottish 
King in person, he crossed the border into Eng- 
land, and made a proclamation to the people, in 
which he called the King " Henry Tudor;" 
offered large rewards to any who should take or 
distress him; and announced himself as King 
Richard the Fourth, come to receive the homage 
of his faithful subjects. His faithful subjects, 
however, cared nothing for him, and hated his 
faithful troops : who, being of different nations, 



42 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



quarreled also among themselves. Worse than 
this, if worse were possible, they began to plun- 
der the country; upon which the White Kose 
said that he would rather lose his rights than 
gain them through the miseries of the English 
people. The Scottish King made a jest of his 
scruples: but they and their whole force went 
"back again without fighting a battle. 

The worst consequence of this attempt was, 
that a rising took place among the people of 
Cornwall, who considered themselves too 
heavily taxed to meet the charges of the expect- 
ed war. Stimulated by Flammock, a lawyer, 
.and Joseph, a blacksmith/ and joined by Lord 
Audley and some other country gentlemen, they 
marched on all the way to Deptford Bridge, 
where they fought a battle with the King's 
army. They were defeated — though the Cornish 
men fought with great bravery — and the lord 
was beheaded, and the lawyer and the black- 
smith were hanged, drawn, and quartered. 
The rest were pardoned. The King, who be- 
lieved every man to be as avaricious as himself, 
and thought that money could settle anything, 
allowed them to make bargains for their liberty 
with the soldiers who had taken them. 

Perkin Warbeck, doomed to wander up and 
down, and never to find rest anywhere — a sad 
fate: almost a sufficient punishment for an im- 
posture, which he seems in time to have half 
"believed himself — lost his Scottish refuge 
through a truce being made between the two 
Kings; and found himself, once more, without 
a country before him in which he could lay his 
head. But James (always honorable and true to 
him, alike when he melted down his plate, and 
even the great gold chain he had been used to 
wear, to pay soldiers in his cause; and now, 
when that cause was lost and hopeless) did not 
conclude the treaty until he had safely departed 
out of the Scottish dominions. He, and his 
beautiful wife, who was faithful to him under 
all reverses, and left her state and home to fol- 
low his poor fortunes, were put aboard ship 
with everything necessary for their comfort and 
protection, and sailed for Ireland. 

But the Irish people had had enough of coun- 
terfeit Earls of Warwick and Dukes of York for 
one while; and would give the White Rose no 
aid. So, the White Rose — encircled by thorns, 
indeed — resolved to go with his beautiful wife 
to Cornwall as a forlorn resource, and see what 
might be made of the Cornish men, who had 
risen so valiantly a little while before, and who 
had fought so bravely at Deptford Bridge. 

To Whitsand Bay, in Cornwall, accordingly, 
came Perkin Warbeck and his wife; and the 
lovely lady he shut up for safety in the Castle 
of St. Michael's Mount, and then marched into 
Devonshire at the head of three thousand Corn- 
ish men. These were increased to six thousand 
by the time of his arrival in Exeter; but there 
the people made a stout resistance, and he went 
on to Taunton, where he came in sight of the 
King's army. The stout Cornish men, although 
they were few in number, and badly armed, 
were so bold, that they never thought of retreat- 
ing; but bravely looked forward to a battle on 
the morrow. Unhappily for them, the man who 
was possessed of so many engaging qualities, 
and who attracted so many people to his side 
when he had nothing else with which to tempt 
them, was not as brave as they. In the night, 
when the two armies lay opposite to each other, 
he mounted a swift horse and fled. When 
morning dawned, tke«poor confiding Cornish 
men, discovering that they had no leader, sur- 
rendered to the King's power. Some of them 
were hanged, and the rest were pardoned and 
, went miserably home. 

Before the King pursued Perkin Warbeck to 
the sanctuary of Beaulieu, in the New Forest, 
where it- was soon known that he had taken 
refuge, he sent a body of horsemen to St. 
Michael's Mount, to seize his wife. She was 
soon taken, and brought as a captive before the 
King. But she was so beautiful, and so good, 
and so devoted to the man'in whom she believed, 
that the King regarded her with compassion, 
treated her with great respect, and placed her at 
court, near the Queen's person. And many 
years after Perkin Warbeck was no more, and 
when his strange story had become like a 
nursery tale, she was called the White Rose by 
the people, in remembrance of her beauty. 

The sanctuary at Beaulieu was soon sur- 
rounded by the King's men; and the King, pur- 
suing his usual dark artful ways, sent pretended 
friends to Perkin "Warbeck to persuade him to 
come out and surrender himself. This he soon 
did. The King having taken a good look at the 
man of whom he had heard so much — from be- 



hind a screen — directed him to be well mounted, 

and to ride behind him at a little distance, 

guarded, but not bound in any way. So they 

entered London with the King's favorite show 

— a procession ; and some of the people hooted 

] as the Pretender rode slowly through the streets 

to the Tower; but the greater part were quiet, 

j and very curious to see him. From the Tower, 

ha was taken to the palace at Westminster, and 

there lodged like a gentleman, though closely 

watched. He was examined every now and 

then as to his imposture; but the King was so 

secret in all he did, that even then he gave it a 

1 consequence which it cannot be supposed to 

j have in itself deserved. 

At last Perkin Warbeck ran away, and took 
' refuge in another sanctuary near Richmond in 
j Surrey. From this he was again persuaded to 
deliver himself up ; and. being conveyed to Lon- 
don, he stood in the stocks for a whole day, out- 
side Westminster Hall, and there read a paper 
purporting to be his full confession, and relating 
his history as the King's agents had originally 
described it. He was then shut up in the Tower 
again, in the company of the Earl of Warwick, 
who had now been there for fourteen years: 
ever since his removal out of Yorkshire, except 
when the King had had him at court, and had 
shown him to the people, to prove the impos- 
ture of the baker's boy. It is but too probable, 
when we consider the crafty character of Henry 
the Seventh, that these two were brought 
together for a cruel purpose. A plot was soon 
discovered between them and the keepers to 
murder the Governor, get possession of the keys, 
and proclaim Perkin Warbeck as King Richard 
the Fourth. That there was some such plot is 
likely; that they were tempted into it is at least 
as likely; that the unfortunate Earl Df Warwick 
■ — last male of the Plantagenet line — was too un- 
used to-the world, and too ignorant and simple, 
to know much about it, whatever it was, is per- 
fectly certain; and that it was the King's in- 
terest to get rid of him is no less so. He was 
beheaded on Tower Hill, and Perkin Warbeck 
was lranged at Tyburn. 

Such was the end of the pretended Duke of 
York, whose shadowy history was made more 
shadowy — and ever will be — by the mystery and 
cratt of the King. If he had turned his great 
natural advantages to a more honest account, he 
might have lived a happy and respected life, 
even in those days. But he died upon a gallows 
at Tyburn, leaving the Scottish lady, who had 
loved him so well, kindly protected at the 
Queen's court. After some time she forgot her 
] old loves and troubles, as many people do with 
Time's merciful assistance, and married a Welsh 
gentleman. Her second husband, Sir Matthew 
Cradoc, more honest and more happy than her 
first, lies beside her in a tomb in the old church 
of Swansea. 

The ill blood between France and England in 
this reign arose out of the continued plotting of 
the Duchess of Burgundy, and disputes respect- 
ing the affairs of Brittany. The King feigned 
to be very patriotic, indignant, and warlike; 
but he always contrived so as never to make war 
in reality, and always to make money. His tax- 
ation of the people, on pretense of war with 
France, involved, at one time, a very dangerous 
insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and 
a common man called John a Chambre. But 
it was subdued by the Royal forces, under 
the command of the Earl of Surrey. The 
knighted John escaped to the Duchess of Bur- 
gundy, who was ever ready to receive any one 
who gave the King trouble; and the plain John 
was hanged at York, in the midst of a number 
of his men, but on a much higher gibbet, as 
being a greater traitor. 'Hung high or hung 
low, however, hanging is much the same to the 
person hung. 

Within a year after her marriage, the Queen 
had given birth to a son, who was called Prince 
Arthur, in remembrance of the old British 
prince of romance and story ; and who, when 
all these events had happened, being then in his 
fifteenth year, was married to Catherine, the 
daughter of the Spanish monarch, with great re- 
joicings and bright prospects; but in a very few 
months he sickened and died. As soon as the 
King had recovered from his grief, he thought 
it a pity that the fortune of the Spanish Princess, 
amounting to two hundred thousand crowns, 
should go out of the family; and therefore 
arranged that the young widow should marry 
his second son Henry, then twelve years of age, 
when he too should be fifteen. There were ob- 
jections to this marriage on the part of the 
clergy; but, as the infallible Pope was gained 
over, and, as he must be richt, that settled the bus- 



iness for the time. The King's eldest daughter 
was provided for, and, a long course of disturb- 
ance was considered to be set at rest, by her 
being married to the Scottish King. 

A.nd now the Queen died. When the King 
had got over that grief too, his mind once more 
reverted to his darling money for consolation, 
and he thought of marrying the Dowager Queen 
of Naples, who was immensely rich: but, as it 
turned out not to be practical to gain the money, 
however practical it might have been to gain the 
lady, he gave up the idea. He was not so fond 
of her but that he soon proposed to marry the 
Dowager Duchess of Savoy ; and, soon afterward, 
the widow of the King of Castile, who was rav- 
ing mad. But he made a money bargain instead, 
and married neither. 

The Duchess of Burgundy, among the other dis- 
contented people to whom she had given refuge, 
had sheltered Edmund de la Pale (younger 
brother of that Earl of Lincoln wrfo was killed 
at Stoke), now Earl of Suffolk. The King had 
prevailed upon him to return to the marriage of 
Prince Arthur; but, he soon afterward went 
away again; and then the King, suspecting a 
conspiracy, resorted to his favorite plan of send- 
ing him some treacherous friends, and buying of 
those scoundrels the secrets they disclosed or in- 
vented. Some arrests and executions took place 
in consequence. In the end, the King, on a 
promise of not taking his life, obtained posses- 
sion of the person of Edmund de la Pole, and 
shut him up in the Tower. 

This was his last enemy. If he had lived 
much longer he would have made many more 
among the people, by the grinding exaction to 
which he constantly exposed them, and by the 
tyrannical acts of his two prime favorites in all 
money-raising matters, Edmund Dudley and 
Richard Empson. But Death — the enemy who 
is not to bE bought off or deceived, and on whom 
no money and no treachery has any effect — pre- 
sented himself at this juncture, and ended the 
King's reign. He died of the gout, on the 
twenty-second of April, one thousand five hun- 
dred and nine, and in the fifty-third year of his 
age, after reigning twenty -four years. He was 
buried in the beautiful Chapel of Westminster 
Abbey which he himself founded, and which still 
bears his name. 

It was in this regin that the great Christopher 
Columbus, on behalf of Spam, discovered what 
was then called the New World. Great wonder, 
interest, and hope of wealth being awakened in 
England thereby, the King and the merchants of 
London and Bristol fitted out an English expe- 
dition for further discoveries in the New World, 
and intrusted it to Sebastian Cabot, of Bristol, 
the son of a Venetian pilot there. He was very 
successful in his voyage, and gained high repu- 
tation, both for himself and England. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

england under henry the eighth, called 
bluff king hal and burly king harry. 

Part the First. 

We now come to King Henry the Eighth, 
whom it has been too much the fashion to call 
" Bluff King Hal," and " Burly King Harry," 
and other fine names; but whom I shall take the 
liberty to call, plainly, one of the most detest- 
able villains that ever drew breath. You will 
be able to judge, long before we come to the end 
of his life, whether he deserves the character. 

He was just eighteen years of age when he 
came to the throne. People said he was hand- 
some 1 then; but I don't believe it. He was a 
big, burly, noisy, small-eyed, large-faced, 
double-chinned, swinish-looking fellow in later 
life (as we know from the likenesses of him, 
painted by the famous Hans Holbein), and it is 
not easy to believe that so bad a character can 
ever have been veiled under a prepossessing ap- 
pearance. 

He was anxious to make himself popular; and 
the people, who had long disliked the late King, 
were very willing to believe that he deserved to 
be so. He was extremely fond of show and dis- 
play, and so were they. Therefore there was 
great rejoicing when he married the Princess 
Catherine, and when they were both crowned. 
And the King fought at tournaments, and al- 
ways came off victorious — for the courtiers took 
care of that— and there was a general outcry 
that he was a wonderful man. Empson, Dud- 
ley, and their supporters were accused of a 
variety of crimes they had never committed, in- 
stead of the offences of which theyreallyhad been 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



43 



guilty; and they were pilloried, and set upon 
horses with their faces to the tails, and knocked 
about and beheaded, to the satisfaction of the 
people, and the enrichment of the King. 

The Pope, so indefatigable in getting the world 
into trouble, had mixed himself up in a war on 
the continent of Europe, occasioned by the reign- 
ing Princes of little quarreling States in Italy 
having at various times married into other Royal 
families, and so led to their claiming a share in 
those petty Governments. The King, who dis- 
covered that he was very fond of the Pope, sent 
a hertld to the King of France, to say that he 
must not make war upon that holy personage, 
hecause he was the father of all Christians. As 
the French King did not mind this relationship 
in the least, and also refused to admit a claim 
King Henry made to certain lands in France, 
war was declared between the two countries. 
Not to perplex this story with an account of the 
tricks and designs of all the sovereigns who were 
engaged in it, it is enough to say that England 
made a blundering alliance with Spain, and got 
stupidly taken in by that country; which made 
its own terms with France when it could, and left 
England in the lurch. Sir Edward Howard, a 
bold admiral, son of the Earl of Surrey, distin- 
guished himself by his bravery against the 
French in this business; but, unfortunately, he 
was more brave than wise, for, skimming into 
the French harbor of Brest with only a few row- 
boats, he attempted (in revenge for the de- 
feat and death of Sir Thomas Knyvett, another 
bold English admi ral) to take some strong French 
ships, well defended with batteries of cannon. 
The upshot was, that he was left on board of 
one of them (in consequence of its shooting away 
from his own boat), with not more than about a 
dozen men, and was thrown into the sea and 
drowned: though not until he had taken from 
his breast his gold chain and gold whistle, which 
were the signs of his office, and had cast them 
into the sea to prevent their being made a boast of 
by the enemy. After tliis defeat — which was a 
great one, for Sir Edward Howard was a man 
of valor and fame — the King took it into his 
head to invade France in person; first executing 
that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father 
had left in the Tower, and appointing Queen 
Catheriue to the charge of his kingdom in his 
absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was 
joined by Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, 
who pretended to be his soldier, and who took 
pay in his service, with a good deal of nonsense 
of that sort, flattering enough to the vanity of a 
vain blusterer. The King might be successful 
enough in sham fights; but his idea of real bat- 
tles chiefly consisted in pitching silken tents of 
bright colors that were ignominiously blown 
down by the wind, and in making a vast dis- 
play of gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fort- 
une, however, favored him better than he de- 
served; for, after much waste of time in tent 
pitching, flag flying, gold curtaining, and other 
such masquerading, he gave the French battle 
at a place called Guinegate, where they took such 
an unaccountable panic, and fled with such 
swiftness, that it was ever afterward called by the 
English the Battle of Spurs. Instead of follow- 
ing up his advantage, the King, finding that he 
had enough of real fighting, came home again. 
The Scottish King, though nearly related to 
Henry by marriage, had taken part against him 
in this war. The Earl of Surrey, as the English 
general, advanced to met him when he came out 
of his own dominions and crossed the river 
Tweed. The two armies came up with ODe an- 
other when the Scottish King had also crossed 
the river Till, and was encamped upon the last 
of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden. 
Along the plain below it, thp English, when the 
hour of battle came, advanced. The Scottish 
army, which had been drawn up in five great 
bodies, then came steadily down in perfect 
silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to meet 
the English army, which came on in one long 
line; and they attacked it with a body of spear- 
men, under Lord Home. At first they had the 
best of it; but the English recovered themselves 
so bravely, and fought with such valor, that, 
when the Scottish King had almost made his 
way up to the Koyal standard, he was slain, and 
the whole Scottish power routed. Ten thousand 
Scottish men lay dead that day on;Flodden Field ; 
and among them, numbers of the nobility and 
gentry. For a long time afterward the Scottish 
peasantry used to believe that tkeir King had 
not been really killed in this battle, because no 
Englishman had found an iron belt he wore 
about his body as a penance for having been an 
unnatural and undutif ul son. But, whatever be- 
came of his belt, the English had his sword and 



dagger, and the ring from his finger, and his 
body too, covered with wounds. There is no 
doubt of it; for it was seen and recognized by 
English gentlemen who had known the Scottish 
King well. 

■"When King Henry was making ready to renew 
the war in France, the French King was con- 
templating peace. His Queen dying at this time, 
he proposed, though he was upward of fifty 
years old, to marry King Henry's sister, the 
Princess Mary, who, besides being only sixteen, 
was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk. As the 
inclinations of young Princesses were not much 
considered in such matters, the marriage was 
concluded, and the poor girl was escorted to 
France, where she was immediately left as the 
French King's bride, with only one of all her 
English attendants. That one was a pretty 
young girl named Anne Boleyn, niece of the 
Earl of Surrey, who had been made Duke of 
Norfolk after the victory of Flodden Field. 
Anne Boleyn's is a name to be remembered, as 
you will presently find. 

And now the French King, who was very 
proud of his young wife, was preparing for 
many years of happiness, and she was looking 
forward, I dare say, to many years of misery, 
when he died within three months, and left her 
a young widow. The new French monarch, 
Francis the First, seeing how important it was 
to his interests that she should take for her 
second husband no one but an Englishman, ad- 
vised her first lover the Duke of Suffolk, when 
King Henry sent him over to France to fetch 
her home, to many her. The Princess being 
herself so fond of that Duke as to tell him that 
he must either do so then, or forever lose 
her, they were wedded ; and Henry afterward 
forgave them. In making interest with the 
King, the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his 
most powerful favorite and adviser, Thomas 
Wolsey — a name very famous in history for its 
rise and downfall. 

Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher 
at Ipswich, in Suffolk, and received so excellent 
an education that he became a tutor to the fam- 
ily of the Marquis of Dorset, who afterward got 
him appointed one of the late King's chaplains. 
On the accession of Henry the Eighth, he was 
promoted and taken into great favor. He was 
now Archbishop of York ; the Pope had made 
him a Cardinal besides; and whoever wanted 
influence in England, or favor with the King — 
whether he were a foreign monarch or an En- 
glish nobleman — was obliged to make a friend of 
the great Cardinal Wolsey. 

He was a gay man, who could dance and jest, 
and sing and driDk; and those were the roads 
to so much, or rather so little, of a heart as 
King Henry had. He was wonderfully fond 
of pomp and glitter, and so was the King. He 
knew a good deal of the Church learning of that 
time; much of which consisted in finding art- 
ful excuses and pretenses for almost any wrong 
thing, and in arguing that black was white, or 
any other color. This kind of learning pleased 
the King too. For many such reasons, the Car- 
dinal was high in estimation with the King; 
and, being a man of far greater ability, knew as 
well how to manage him as a clever keeper may 
know how to manage a wolf or a tiger, or any 
other cruel and uncertain beast, that may turn 
upon him and tear him any day. Never had 
there been seen in England such state as my 
Lord Cardinal kept. His wealth was enormous; 
equal, it was reckoned, to the riches of the 
Crown. His palaces were as splendid as the 
King's, and his retinue was eight hundred 
strong. He held his court, dressedout from top 
to toe in flaming scarlet; and his very shoes were 
golden, set with precious stones. His followers 
rode on blood horses; while he, with a wonder- 
ful affectation of humility in the midst of his 
great splendor, ambled on a mule with a red 
velvet saddle and bridle, and golden stirrups. 

Through the influence of this stately priest, a 
grand meeting was arranged to take place be- 
tween the French and EnglishKings in France; 
but on ground belonging to England. A pro 
digious show of friendship and rejoicing was to 
be made on the occasion; and heralds were sent 
to proclaim with brazen trumpets, through all 
the principal cities of Europe, that on a certain 
day the Kings of France and England, as com- 
panions and brothers in arms, each attended by 
eighteen followers, would hold a tournament 
against all knights who might choose to come. 

Charles, the new Emperor of Germany (the old 
one being dead), wanted to prevent too cordial an 
alliance between these sovereigns, and came over 
to England before the King could repair to the 
place of meeting; and, besides making an agree- 



able impression upon him, secured Wolsey's in- 
terest by promising that his influence should 
make him Pope when the next vacancy occurred. 
On the day when the Emperor left England, the 
King and all the court went over to Calais, and 
thence to the place of meeting, between Ardres 
and Guisnes, commonly called the Field of the 
Cloth of Gold. Here, all manner of expense and 
prodigality was lavished on the decorations of 
the show; many of the knights and gentlemen 
being so superbly dressed that it was said they 
carried their whole estates upon their shoulders. 

There were sham castles, temporary chapels, 
fountains running wine, great cellars full of wine 
free as water to all comers, silk tents, gold lace 
and foil, gilt lions, and such things without end, 
and, in the midst of all, the rich Cardinal outshone 
and outglittered all the noblemen and gentlemen 
assembled. After a treaty made between the 
two Kings with as much solemnity as if they had 
intended to keep it, the lists— nine hundred feet 
long, and three hundred and twenty broad — were 
opened for the tournament; the Queens of 
France and England looking on with great array 
of lords and ladies. Then, for ten days, the two 
sovereigns fought five combats every day, and al- 
ways beat their polite adversaries; though they 
do write that the King of England, beingthrown 
in a wrestle one day by the King of France, lost 
his kingly temper with his brother in arms, and 
wanted to make a quarrel of it. Then, there is 
a great story belonging to this Field of the Cloth 
of Gold, showing how the English were distrust- 
ful of the French, and the French of the En- 
glish, until Francis rode alone one morning to 
Henry 'stent; and, going in before he was out 
of bed, told him in joke that he was his pris- 
oner; and how Henry jumped out of bed and 
embraced Francis; and how Francis helped 
Henry to dress, and warmed his linen for him; 
and how Henry gave Francis a splendid jeweled 
collar, and how Francis gave Henry, in return, 
a costly bracelet. All this and a great deal more 
was so written about, and sung about, and talked 
about at that time (and, indeed, since that time 
too), that the world has had good cause to be 
sick of it forever. 

Of course, nothing came of all these fine 
doings but a speedy renewal of the war between 
England and France, in which the two Royal 
companions and brothers in arms longed very 
earnestly to damage one another. But, before it 
broke out again, the Duke of Buckingham was 
shamefully executed on Tower Hill, on the evi- 
deneeof a discharged servant — really for nothing, 
except the folly of having believed in a friar of 
the name of Hopkins, who had pretended to be 
a prophet, and who had mumbled and jumbled 
out some nonsense about the Duke's son being 
destined to be very great iu the land. It was 
believed that the unfortunate Duke had given 
offense to the great Cardinal by expressing his 
mind freely about the expense and absurdity of 
the whole business of the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold. At any rate, he was beheaded, as I have 
said, for nothing. And the peop e who saw it 
done were very angry, and cried out that it was 
the work of " the butcher's son!" 

The new war was a short one, though the Earl 
of Surrey invaded France again, and did some 
injury to that country. It ended in another 
treaty of peace between the two kingdoms, and 
in the discovery that the Emperor of Germany 
was not such a good friend to England in real- 
ity as he pretended to be. Neither did he keep 
his promise to Wolsey to make him Pope, though 
the King urged him. Two Popes died iu pretty 
quick succession; but the foreign priests were 
too much for the Cardinal, and kept him out of 
the post. So the Cardinal and King together 
found out that the Emperor of Germany was 
not a man to keep faith with; broke off a pro- 
jected marriage between the King's daughter 
Mary, Princess of Wales, and that sovereign; 
and began to consider whether it might not be 
well to marry the young lady, either to Francis 
himself, or to his eldest son. 

There now arose at Wittemberg, in Germany, 
the great leader of the mighty change in Eng- 
land which is called The Reformation, and which 
set the people free from their slavery to the 
priests. This was a learned Doctor, named Mar- 
tin Luther, who knew all about them, for he 
had been a priest, and even a monk, himself. 
The preaching and writing of Wickliffe had set 
a number of men thinking on this subject; and 
Luther, finding one day, to his great surprise, 
that there really was a book called the New 
Testament, which the priests did not allow to 
be read, and which contained truths which they 
suppressed, began to be very vigorous against 
the whole body, from the Pope downward. It 



44 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



happened, while he was yet only beginning his 
vast work of awakening the nation, that an im- 
pudent fellow named Tetzel, a friar of very had 
character, came into his neighborhood selling 
what were called Indulgences, by wholesale, to 
raise money for beautifying the great Cathedral of 
St. Peter's at Rome. Whoever bought an Indul- 
gence of the Pope was supposed to buy himself 
off from the punishment of Heaven for his 
offenses. Luther told the people that these In- 
dulgences were worthless bits of paper before 
God, and that Tetzel and his masters were a crew 
of impostors in selling them. 

The King and the Cardinal were mightily in- 
dignant at this presumption ; and the King (with 
the help of Sir Thomas More, a wise man, whom 
lie afterward repaid by striking off his head) 
even wrote a book about it, with which the Pope 
was so well pleased that he gave 'the King the 
title of Defender of the Faith. The King and 
the Cardinal also issued flaming warnings to the 
people not to read Luther's books, on pain of 
excommunication. But they did read them for 
all that. ; and the rumor of what was in them 
spread far and wide. 

When this great change was thus going on, 
the King began to show himself in his truest 
and worst colors. A.nne Boleyn, the pretty lit- 
tle girl who had gone abroad to France with his 
sister, was by this time grown up to be very 
beautiful, and was one of the ladies in attend- 
ance on Queen Catherine. Now, Queen Cather- 
ine was no longer young or handsome, and it 
is likely that she was not particularly good- 
tempered; having been always rather melan- 
choly, and having been made more so by the 
deaths of four of her children when they were 
very young. So, the King fell in love with the 
fair Anne Boleyn, and said to himself, "How 
can I be best rid of my own troublesome wife 
whom I am tired of, and marry Anne?" 

You recollect that Queen Catherine had been 
the wife of Henry's brother. What does the 
King 'do, after thinking it over, but calls his 
favorite priests about him, and says, Oh! his 
mind is in such a dreadful state, and he is so 
frightfully uneasy, because he is afraid it was 
not lawful for him. to marry the Queen! Not 
one of those priests had the courage to hint that 
it was rather curious he had never thought of , 
that before, and that his mind seemed to have 
been in a tolerably jolly condition during a 
great many years, in which he certainly had 
not fretted himself thin; but they all said, Ah! 
■ that was very true, and it was a serious busi- ' 
ness; and perhaps the best way to make it right 
would be for his Majesty to be divorced ! The 
King replied, Yes, he thought that would be the 
best" way, certainly ; so they all went to work. ] 

If I were to relate to you the intrigues and 
plots that took place in the endeavor to get this 
divorce, you would think the History of Eng i 
land the most tiresome book in the world. So 
1 shall say no more than that, after a vast deal 
of negotiation and evasion the Pope issued a 
commission to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal 
Campeggio (whom he sent over from Italy for . 
the purpose), to try the whole case in England. | 
It is supposed — and 1 think with reason — that 
SVolsey was the Queen's enemy, because she 
had reproved him for his proud and gorgeous 
manner of life. But, he did not at first know 
that the King wanted to marry Anne Boleyn ; 
and, when he did know it, he even went down { 
on his knees in the endeavor to dissuade him. 

The Cardinals opened their Court in the Con- ■ 
vent of the Black Friars, near to where the ■ 
bridge of that name in London now stands;, and 
the King and Queen, that they might be near it, ' 
took up their lodgings at the adjoining palace of 
Bridewell, of which nothing now remains but a 
bad prison. On the opening of the Court, when 
the King and Queen were called on to appear, j 
that poor ill-used lady, with a dignity and i 
firmness, and yet with a womanly affection, ! 
worthy to be always admired, went and kneeled 
at the'King's feet, and said that she had come a 
stranger to his dominions; that she had been a 
good and true wife to him for twenty years; 
and that she could acknowledge no power in 
those Cardinals to try whether she should be 
considered his wife after all that time, or should 
be put away. With that, she got up and left the 
Court, and would never afterward come back to 
it. 

The King pretended to be very much over- 
come, and said, Oh! my lords and gentlemen, 
what a good woman she was to be sure, and 
how delighted he would be to live with her unto 
death, but for that terrible uneasiness in his 
mind which was quite wearing him away! So, 
the case went on. and there was nothing but 



talk for two months. Then Cardinal Campeg- 
gio, who, on behalf of the Pope, wanted noth- j 
ing so much as delay, adjourned it for two ; 
more months; and, before that time was 
elapsed, the Pope himself adjourned it in- i 
definitely, by requiring the King and Queen to j 
come to Rome and have i* "*4d there. But, by : 
good luck for the Kinf d was brought to ! 

him by some of his pec Jiat they had hap- j 
pened to meet at supper Thomas Cranmer, a | 
learned Doctor of Cambridge, who' had pro- 1 
posed to urge the Pope on, by referring the case 
to all the learned doctors and bishops, here and 
there and everywhere, and getting their opin- 
ions that the King's marriage was unlawful. 
The King, who was now in a hurry to marry 
Anne Boleyn, thought this such a good idea, 
that he sent for Cranmer post haste, and said to 
Lord Rochfoit, Anne Boleyn's father, "Take 
this learned Doctor down to your country 
house, and there let him have a good room for 
a study, and no end of books out of which to 
prove that 1 may marry your daughter." Lord 
Rochfort, not at all reluctant, made the learned 
Doctor as comfortable as he could; and the 
learned Doctor went to work to prove his case. 
All this time, the King and Anne Boleyn were 
writing letters to one another almost daily, full 
of impatience L to have the case settled; and 
Anne Boleyn was showing herself (as I think) 
very worthy of the fate which afterward befell 
her. 

it was bad for Cardinal Wolsey that he had 
left Cranmer to render this help. It was worse 
for him that he had tried to dissuade the King 
from marrying Anne Boleyn. Such a servant 
as he, to such a master as Henry, would proba- 
bly have fallen in any case; but, between the 
hatred of the party of the Queen that was, and 
the hatred of the party of the Queen that was 
to be, he fell suddenly and heavily. Going 
down one day to the Court of Chancery, where 
he now presided, he was waited upon by the 
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who told him 
that they brought an order to him to resign that 
office, and to withdraw quietly to a house he 
had at Esher, in Surrey. The Cardinal refusing, 
they rode off to the King; and next day came 
back with a letter from him, on reading which 
the Cardinal submitted. An inventory was 
made out of all the riches in his palace at York 
Place (now Whitehall), and he went sorrow- 
fully up the river, in his barge, to Putney. An 
abject man he was, in spite of his pride; for 
being overtaken, riding out of that place toward 
Esher, by one of the King's chamberlains who 
brought him a kind message and a ring, he 
alighted from his mule, took off his cap, and 
kneeled down in the dirt. His poor Fool, 
whom in fhis prosperous days he had always 
kept in his palace to entertain him, cut a far 
better figure than he; for, when the Cardinal 
said to the chamberlain that he had nothing to 
send to his lord the King as a present, but that 
jester who was a most excellent one, it took six 
strong yeomen to remove the faithful fool from 
his master. 

The once proud Cardinal was soon further 
disgraced, and wrote the most abject letters to 
his vile sovereign; who humbled him one day, 
and encouraged him the next, according to his 
humor, until he was at last ordered to go and 
reside.in his diocese of York. He said he was 
too poor; but I don't know how he made that 
out, for he took a hundred and sixty servants 
with him, and seventy-two cart loads of furni- 
ture, food, and wine. He remained in that part 
of the country for the best part of a year, and 
showed himself so improved by his misfort- 
unes, and was so mild and so conciliating, that 
he won all hearts. And indeed, even in his 
proud days, he had done some magnificent 
things for learning and education. At last, he 
was arrested for high treason; and coming 
slowly on his journey toward London, got as 
far as Leicester. Arriving at Leicester Abbey 
after dark, and very ill, he said — when the 
monks came out at the gate with lighted torches 
to receive him — that he had come to lay his 
bones among them. He had indeed; for he was 
taken to k bed, from which he never rose again. 
His last words were, " Had I but served God as 
diligently as I have served the King, He would 
not have given me over in my gray hairs. How- 
beit, this is my just reward for my pains and 
diligence, not regarding my service to God, but 
only my duty to my Prince. " The news of his 
death was quickly carried to the King, who was 
amusing himself with archery in the garden of 
the magnificent palace at Hampton Court, 
which that very Wolse.y had presented to him. 
The greatest emotion his Royal mind displayed. 



at the loss of a servant so faithful and so 
ruined, was a particular desire to lay hold of 
fifteen hundred pounds which the Cardinal was 
reported to have hidden somewhere. 

The opinions concerning the divorce, of the 
learned doctors and bishops and others, being at 
last collected, and being generally in the King's 
fav^r, were forwarded to the Pope with an en- 
treaty that he would now grant it. The unfortu- 
nate Pope, who was a timid man, was half dis- 
tracted between his fear of his authority being 
set aside in England if he did not do as he was 
asked, and his dread of offending the Emp%ror 
of Germany, who was Queen Catherine's 
nephew. In this state of mind he still evaded, 
and did nothing. Then, Thomas Cromwell, 
who had been one of Wolsey's faithful attend 
ants", and had remained so even in his decline, 
advised the King to take the matter into his 
own hands, and make himself the head of the 
whole Church. This, the King, by various art- 
ful means, began to do; but he recompensed 
the clergy by allowing them to burn as many 
people as they pleased for holding Luther's 
opinions. You must understand that Sir Thomas 
More, the wise man who had helped the King 
with his book, had been made Chancellor in 
Wolsey's place. But, as he was truly attached 
to the Church as it was, even in its abuses, he, 
in this state of things, resigned. 

Being now quite resolved to get rid of Queen 
Catherine, and to marry Anne Boleyn without 
more ado, the King made Cranmer Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and directe Queen Catherine to 
leave the court. She obeyed; but replied that, 
wherever she went, she was Queen of England 
still, and would remain so to the last. The 
King then married Anne Boleyn privately ; and 
the new Archbishop of Canterbury, within half 
a year, declared his marriage with Queen Cather- 
ine void, and crowned Anne Boleyn Queen. 

She might have known" that no good could 
ever come from such wrong, and that the co"- 
pulent briite, who had been so faithless and so 
cruel to his first wife, could be more faithless 
and more cruel to his second. She might have 
known that, even when he was in love with her, 
he had been a mean and selfish coward, run- 
ning away, like a frightened cur, from her so- 
ciety and her house when a dangerous sickness 
broke out in it and when she might easily have 
taken it and died, as several of the household 
did. But, Anne Boleyn arrived at all this 
knowledge too late, and bought it at a dear 
price. Her bad marriage with a worse man 
came to its natural end. Its natural end was 
not, as we shall too soon see, a natural death for 
her. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

england under henkv the eighth. 
Pabt the Second. 

The Pope was thrown into a very angry 
state of mind when he heard of the King's mar- 
riage, and fumed exceedingly. Many of the 
English monks and friars, seeing that their 
order was in danger, did the same ; some even 
declaimed against the King in church before 
his face, and were not to be stopped until he 
himself roared out " Silence!" The King, not 
much the worse for this, took it pretty quietly; 
and was very glad when his Queen gave birth 
to a daughter, who was christened Elizabeth, 
and declared Princess of Wales, as her sister 
Mary had already been. 

One of the most atrocious features of this 
reign was that Henry the Eighth was always 
trimming between the reformed religion and the 
unreformed one; so that the more he quarreled 
with the Pope, .the more of his own subjects he 
roasted alive for not holding the Pope's opin- 
ions. Thus, an unfortunate student named John 
Frith, and a poor simple tailor named Andre 
Hewet who loved him very much, and said that 
whatever John Frith believed he believed, were 
burnt in Smithfield — to show w T hat a capital 
Christian the King was. 

But, these were speedily followed by two 
much greater victims, Sir Thomas More, and 
John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester. The lat- 
ter, who was a good and amiable old man, had 
committed no greater offense than believing in 
Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent — 
another of thofc ridiculous women who pre- 
tended to be inspired, and to make all sorts of 
heavenly revelations, though they indeed ut- 
tered nothing but evil nonsense. For this offense 
—as it was pretended, but really for denying 
the King to be the supreme Head of the Church 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



45 



— he got into trouble, and was put in prison; 
but, even then, lie might have been suffered to 
die naturally (short work having been made of 
executing the Kentish Maid and her principal 
followers), but that the Pope, to spite the King, 
resolved lo make him a Cardinal. Upon that 
the King made a ferocious joke to the effect 
that the'Pope might send Fisher a red hat — 
which is the way they make a Cardinal — but he 
should have no head on which to wear it; and 
he was tried with all unfairness and injustice, 
and sentenced to death. He died like a noble 
and virtuous old man, and left a worthy name 
behind him. The King supposed, I dare say, 
that Sir Thomas More would be frightened by 
this example; but, as he was not to be easily ter- 
rified, and, thoroughly believing in the Pope, 
had made up his mind that the King was not 
the rightful Head of the Church, he positively 
refused to say that he was. For this crime he, 
too, was tried and sentenced, after having been 
in prison a whole year. When he was doomed 
to death, and came away from his trial with the 
edge of the executioner's ax turned toward him 
— as was always done in those times when a ' 
state prisoner came to that hopeless pass — he 
bore it quite serenely, and gave his blessing to 
his son, who pressed through the crowd in 
Westminster Hall, and kneeled down to receive 
it. But, when he got to the Tower "Wharf on 
his way back to his prison, and his favorite I 
daughter, Margaret Roper, a very good woman, [ 
rushed through the guards again and again, to ! 
kiss him, and to weep upon his neck, he was I 
overcome at last. He soon recovered, and never ' 
more showed any feeling but cheerfulness and 
courage. When he was .going up the steps of 
the scaffold to his death, he said jokingly to the 
Lieutenant of the Tower, observing that they 
were weak and shook beneath his tread, ' ' I pray 
you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up; and 
' for my coming down, I can shift for myself." 
Also he sai d to the executioner, after he had 
laid his head upon the block, " Let me put my 
beard out of the way; for that, at least, has never 
committed any treason." Then his head was 
struck off at a blow. These two executions 
were worthy of King Henry the Eighth. Sir 
Thomas More was one of the most virtuous men 
in his dominions, and the Bishop was one of 
his oldest and truest friends. But to be a friend 
of that fellow was almost as dangerous as to be 
his wife. 

When the news of these two murders got to 
Rome, the Pope raged against the murderer 
more than ever Pope raged since the world be 
gau, and prepared a Bull, ordering his subjects 
to take arms against him and dethrone him. 
The King took all possible precautions to keep 
that document out of his dominions, and set to 
work, in return, to suppress a great number of 
the English monasteries and abbeys. 

This destruction was begun by a body of com- : 
missioners, of whom Cromwell (whom the King 
had taken into great favor) was the head; and . 
was carried on through some few years to its en- 
tire completion. There is no doubt that many 
of these religious establishments were religious 
in nothing but in name, and tvere crammed 
with lazy, indolent, and sensual monks. There 
is no doubt that they imposed upon the people 
in every possible way; that they had images 
moved by wires, which they pretended were 
miraculously moved by Heaven; that they had 
among them a whole tun measure full'of teeth, 
all purporting to have come out of the head of 
one saint, who must indeed have been a very 
extraordinary person with that enormous allow- 
ance of grinders; that they had bits of coal 
which they said had fried St. Lawrence, and 
bits of toe-nails which they said belonged to ; 
other famous saints; penknives, and boots, and 
girdles which they said belonged to others; and 
that all these bits of rubbish tvere called Relics, ' 
and adored by the ignorant people. But, on the 
other hand, there is no doubt, either that the 
King's officers and men punished the good 
monks with the bad; did great injustice; de- 
molished many beautiful things and many valu- j 
able libraries; destroyed numbers of paintings, | 
stained-glass windows, tine pavements, and 
carvings; and that the whole court were raven- \ 
ously greedy and rapacious for the division of 
this great spoil amongthem. The King seems 
to have grown almost mad in the ardor of this 
pursuit; for he declared Thomas & Becket a 
traitor, though he had been dead so many years, 
and had his body dug up out of his grave. He 
must have been as miraculous as the monks pre- | 
tended, if they had told the truth, for he was ! 
found with one head on his shoulders, and they 
had shown another as his undoubted and gen- 1 



nine head ever since his death; it had brought 
them vast sums of money, too. The gold and 
jewels on his shrine tilled two great chests, and 
eight men tottered as they carried them away. 
How rich the monasteries were you may infer 
from the fact that, when they were all sup- 
pressed, one hundred and thirty thousand 
pounds a year — in those days an immense sum 
. — came to the Crown. 

These things were not done without causing 
great discontent among the people. The monks 
had been good landlords and hospitable enter- 
tainers of all travelers, and had been accustomed 
to give away a great deal of corn, aDd fruit, and 
meat, and other things. In those days it was 
difficult to change goods into money, in conse- 
quence of the roads being very few and very 
bad, and the carts and wagons of the worst de- 
scription; and they must either have given away 
some of the good things they possessed in enor- 
mous quantities, or have suffered them to spoil 
and niolder. So, many of the people missed 
what it was more agreeable to get idly than to 
work for; and the monks, who were diven out 
of their homes and wandered about, encouraged 
their discontent ; and there were, consequently, 
great risings in Lincolnshire and "Yorkshire. 
These were put down by terrific executions, 
from which the monks themselves did not es- 
cape, and the King went on grunting and growl- 
in" in his own fat way, like a Royal pig. 

I have told all this story of the religious 
houses at one time, to make it plainer, and to 
get back to the King's domestic affairs. 

The unfortunate Queen Catherine was by this 
time dead; and the King was by this time as 
tired of his second Queen as he had been of the 
first. As he had fallen in love with Anne when 
she was in the service of Catherine, so he now 
fell in love with another lady in the service of 
Anne. See bow wicked deeds are punished, and 
how bitterly and self-reproachfully the Queen 
must now have thought of her own rise to the 
throne! The new fancy was a Lady Jane Sey- 
mour; and the King no sooner set his mind on 
her than he resolved to have Anne Boleyn's 
head. So, he brought a number of charges 
against Anne, accusing her of dreadful crimes 
which she had never committed, and implica- 
ting in them her own brother and certain gentle- 
men in her service : among whom one N orris, 
and Mark Smeaton a musician, are best re- 
membered. As the lords and councilors were 
as afraid of the King, and as subservient to 
him, as the meanest peasant in England was, 
they brought in Anne Boleyn guilty, and the 
other unfortunate persons accused with her 
guilty too. Those gentlemen died like men, 
with the exception of Smeaton, who had been 
tempted by the King into telling lies, which he 
called confession^, and who had expected to be 
pardoned; but who, I am very glad to say, wils 
not. There was then only the Queen to dispose 
of. She had been surrounded in the Tower 
with women spies; had been monstrously perse- 
cuted and foully slandered; and had received no 
justice. But her spirit rose with her afflictions; 
and, after having in vain tried to soften the 
King by writing an affecting letter to him which 
still exists, " from her doleful prison in the 
Tower," she resigned herself to death. She 
said to those about her, very cheerfully, that 
she had heard say the executioner was a good 
one, and that she had a little neck (she laughed 
and clasped it with her hands as she said that), 
and would soon be out of her pain. And she 
was soon out of her pain, poor creature, on the 
Green inside the Tower, and her body was flung 
into an old box, and put away in the ground 
under the chapel. 

There is a story that the King sat in his pal- 
ace listening very anxiously for the sound of the 
cannon which was to announce this new mur- 
der; and that, when he heard income booming 
on the air, he rose up iu great spirits, and ordered 
out his dogs to go a hunting. He was bad 
enough to do it ; but whether he did it or not, it 
is certain that he married Jane Seymour the 
very next day. 

I have not much pleasure in recording that 
she lived just long enough to give birth to a 
son, who was christened Edward, and then to 
die of a fever; for, I cannot but think that any 
woman who married such .a ruffian, and knew 
what innocent blood was on his hands, deserved 
the ax that would assuredly have fallen on the 
neck of Jane Seymour, if she had lived much 
longer. 

Cranmer had done what he could to save some 
of the Church property for purposes of religion 
and education; but, the great families had been 
so hungry to get hold of it, that very little could 



be rescued for such objects. Even Miles Cover- 
dale, who did the people the inestimable service 
in' translating the Bible into English (which I • 
unreformed religion never permitted lo be 
done), was left in poverty, while tin 1 great fami 
lies clutched the Church lands and money. The 
people had been told that when the Crown can 
into possession of these funds, it would not b ■ 
necessary to tax them; but they were taxed 
afresh directly afterward. It was fortunate for 
them, indeed, that so many nobles were so 
' greedy for this wealth; since, if it had remained 
j with the Crown, there might have been no end 
I to tyranny for hundreds of years. One of [he 
most active writers on the Church's side again I 
the King was a member of his own family — a. 
sort of distant cousin, Reginald Pole by name — 
who attacked him iu the most violent manner 
(though he received a pension from him all the 
time), and fought for the Church with his pen, 
day and night. As he was beyond the King's 
reach — being in Italy — the King politely invited 
him over to discuss the subject, but he, know- 
ing better than to come, and wisely staying 
where be was, the King's rage fell upon his 
brother Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, 
and some other gentlemen: who were tried for 
high treason- in corresponding with him aud 
aiding him— which they probably did— and 
were all executed. The Pope made Reginald 
Pole a Cardinal; but, so much against his will, 
that it is thought he even aspired in his own 
mind to the vacant throne of England, aud had 
hopes of marrying the Princess Mary, flis be- 
ing made a high priest, however, put an end to 
all that. His mother, the venerable Countess 
of Salisbury — who was, unfortunately for her- 
self, within the tyrant's reach — was the last of 
his relatives on whom his wrath fell. When 
she was told to lay her gray head upon the 
block, she answered the executioner, " No! My 
head never committed treason, and, if you want 
it, you shall seize it." So, she ran round and 
round the scaffold with the executioner striking 
at her, and her gray hair bedabbled with blood; 
and even when they held her down upon the 
block she moved her head about to the last, re- 
solved to be no party to her own barbarous mur- 
der. All this the people bore, as they had borne 
everything else. 

Indeed, they bore much more; for the slow 
fires of Smithfield were continually burning, 
and people were constantly being roasted To 
death — still to show what a good Christian the 
King was. He defied the Pope and bis Bull, 
which was now issued, and had come into Eng 
land; but he burned innumerable people via e 
only offense was that they differed from the 
Pope's religious opinions. There was a wretched 
man named Lambert, among others, who 
tried for this before the King, and with whom 
six bishops argued one after another. When he 
was quite exhausted (as well as he might lie, 
after six bishops) he threw himself on the 
j King's mercy; but the King blustered out that 
he had no mercy for heretics. So, he too fed 
the fire. 

All this the people bore, and more than all 
this yet. The national spirit seems to have 
been banished from the kingdom at this time. 
The very people who were executed for treason, 
the very wives and friends of the " bluff" King, 
spoke of him on the scaffold as a good Prince, 
and a gentle Prince — just as serfs in similar cir- 
cumstances have been known to do under the 
Sultan and Bashaws of the East, or under the 
fierce old tyrants of Russia, who poured boiling 
and freezing water on them alternately until they 
died. The Parliament were as bad as the rest, 
and gave the King whatever he wanted ; among 
other vile accommodations, they gave him new 
powers of murdering, at his will and pleasure, 
any one whom he might choose to call a traitor. 
But the worst measure they passed was an Act 
of Six Articles, commonly called at the lime 
" the whip with six strings;" which punished 
offenses against the Pope's opinions without 
mercy, and enforced the very worst parts of the 
monkish religion. Cranmer would have modi- 
fied it, if he could; but, being overborne by the 
Romish party, had not the power. As one of 
the articles declared that priests should not 
marry, and as he was married himself, he sent 
his wife and children into Germany, and began 
to tremble at his danger; none the less because 
he was, and had long been, the King's friend. 
This whip of six strings was made under the 
King's own eye. It should never be forgotten 
of him how cruelly he supported the worst of 
the Popish doctrines when there was nothing to 
be got by opposing them. 

This amiable monarch now thought of taking 



46 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



another wife. He proposed to the French King 
to have some of the ladies of the French court 
exhibited before him, that he might make his 
Royal choice; but the French King answered 
that he would rather not have his ladies trotted 
out to be shown like horses at a fair. He pro- 
posed to the Dowager Duchess of Milan, who 
replied *that she might have thought of such a 
match if she had had two heads; but that, only 
owning one, she must beg to keep it safe. At 
last Cromwell represented that there was a 
Protestant Princess in Germany — those who 
held the reformed religion were called Protest- 
acits, because their leaders had Protested against 
the abuses and impositions of the unreformed 
Church — named Anne of CI eves, who was 
beautiful, and would answer the purpose admi- 
rably. The King said was she a large woman, 
because he must have a fat wife? " Oh yes!" 
said Cromwell; "she was very large, just the 
thing." On hearing this, the King sent over 
his famous painter, Hans Holbein, to take her 
portrait. Hans made her out to be so good- 
looking that the King was satisfied, and the 
marriage was arranged. But, whether any- 
body had paid Hans to touch up the picture ; 
or whether Hans, like one or two other paint- 
ers, flattered a Princess in the ordinary way of 
business, I cannot say : all I know is, that when 
Anne came over, and the King went to Roches- 
ter to meet her, and first saw her without her 
seeing him, he swore she was " a great Flanders 
mare," and said he would never marry her. 
Being obliged to do it now matters had gone so 
far, he would not give her the presents he had 
prepared, and would never notice her. He 
never forgave Cromwell his part in the affair. 
His downfall dates from that time. 

It was quickened by his enemies, in the inter- 
ests of the unreformed religion, putting in the 
King's way, at a state dinner, a niece of the 
Duke of Norfolk, Catherine Howard, a young 
lady of fascinating manners, though small in 
stature, and not particularly beautiful. Falling 
in love with her on the spot, the King soon di- 
vorced Anne of Cleves, after making her the 
subject of much brutal talk, on pretense that 
she had been previously betrothed to some one 
else— which would never do for one of his dig- 
nity — and married Catherine. It is probable 
that on his wedding-day, of all days in the 
year, he sent his faithful Cromwell to the scaf- 
fold, and had his head struck off. He further 
celebrated the occasion by burning at one time, 
and causing to be drawn to the fire on the same 
hurdles, some Protestant prisoners for denying 
the Pope's doctrines, and some Roman Catholic 
prisoners for denying his own supremacy. Still 
the people bore it, and not a gentleman in Eng- 
land raised his hand. 

But, by a just retribution, it soon came out 
that Catherine Howard, before her marriage, 
had been really guilly of such crimes asithe 
King had falsely attributed to his second wife 
Anne Boleyn; so, again the dreadful ax made 
the King a widower, and this Queen passed 
away as so many in that reign had passed away 
before her. As an appropriate pursuit under 
the circumstances, Henry then applied himself 
to superintendingt he composition of a religious 
book called "A necessary Doctrine for any 
Christian Man." He must have been a little 
confused in his mind, I think, at about this pe- 
riod ; for he was so false to himself as to be true 
to some one: that some one being Cranmer, 
whom the Duke of Norfolk and others of his 
enemies tried to ruin ; but to whom the King 
was steadfast, and to whom he one night gave 
his ring, charging him when he should find 
himself, next day, accused of treason, to show 
it to the Council board. This Cranmer did, to 
the confusion of his enemies. 1 suppose the 
King thought he might want him a little longer. 

He married yet once more. Yes, strange to 
say, he found in England another woman who 
would become his wife, and she was Catherine 
Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. She leaned to- 
ward the reformed religion; and it is some com- 
fort to know that she tormented the King con- 
siderably by arguing a variety of doctrinal 
points with him on all possible occasions. She 
had very nearly done this to her own destruc- 
tion. After one of these conversations, the 
King, in a very black mood, -actually instructed 
Gardiner, one of his Bishops, who favored the 
Popish opinions, to draw a bill of accusation 
against her, which would have inevitably 
brought her to the scaffold where her predeces- 
sors had died, but that one of her friends picked 
up the paper of instructions, which had been 
dropped in the palace, and gave her timely no- 
tice. She fell ill with terror; but managed the 



King so well when he came to entrap her into 
further statements — by saying that she had only 
spoken on such points to divert his mind, and to 
get some information from his extraordinary 
wisdom — that he gave her a kiss, and called her 
his sweetheart. And when the Chancellor came 
next day actually to take her to the Tower, the 
King sent him about his business, and honored 
him with the epithets of a beast, a knave, and a 
fool. So near was Catherine Parr to the block, 
and so narrow was her escape! 

There was war with Scotland in this reign, 
and a short clumsy war with France for favor- 
ing Scotland; but, the events at home were so 
dreadful, and leave such an enduring stain on 
the country, that I need say no more of what 
happened abroad. 

A few more horrors, and this reign is over. 
There was a' lady, Anne Askew, in Lincoln- 
shire, who inclined to the Protestant opinions, 
and whose husband, being a fierce Catholic, 
turned her out of his house. She came to Lon- 
don, and was considered as offending against 
the six articles, and was taken to the Tower, 
and put upon the rack— probably because it was 
hoped that she might, in her agony, criminate 
some obnoxious persons ; if falsely, so much the 
better. She was tortured without uttering a 
cry, until the Lieutenant of the Tower would 
suffer his men to torture her no more; and then 
two priests who were present actually pulled 
off their robes, and turned the wheels of the rack 
with their own hands, so rending and twisting 
and breaking her that she was afterward carried 
to the fire in a chair. She was burned with 
three others, a gentleman, a clergyman, and a 
tailor; and so the world went on. 

Either the King became afraid of the power 
of the Duke of Norfolk, and his son the Earl of 
Surrey, or they gave him some offense, but he 
resolved to pull them down, to follow all the 
rest who were gone. The son was tried first — ■ 
of course for nothing— and defended himself 
bravely; but of coarse he was found guilty, 
and of course he was executed. Then his father 
was laid hold of, and left for death too. 

But the King himself was left for death by a 
Greater King, and the earth was to be rid of 
him at last. He was now a swollen, hideous 
spectacle, with a great hole in his leg, and so 
odious to every sense that it was dreadful to 
approach him. When he was found to be dy- 
ing, Cranmer was sent for from his palace at 
Croydon and" came with all speed, but found 
him speechless. Happily, in that hour he per- 
ished. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his 
age, and the thirty eighth of his reign. 

Henry the Eighth has been favored by some 
Protestant writers because the Reformation was 
achieved in his time. But the mighty merit of 
it lies with other men, and not with him; and 
it cau be rendered none the worse by this mon- 
ster's crimes, and none the better by any defense 
of them. The plain truth is, that he was a 
most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human 
nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the 
History of England. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH. 

Henry the Eighth had made a will, ap- 
pointing a Council of sixteen to govern the 
kingdom for his son while he was under age (he 
was now only ten years old), and another Coun- 
cil of twelve to help them. The most powerful 
of the first Council was the Earl of Hertford, 
the young King's uncle, who lost no time in 
bringing his nephew with great state up to En- 
field, and thence to the Tower. It was consid- 
ered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the 
young King tnat he was sorry for his father's 
death; but, as common subjects have that 
virtue, too, sometimes, we will say no more 
about it. 

There was a curious part of the late King's 
will, requiring his executors to fulfill whatever 
promises he had made. Some of the court 
wondering what these might be, the Earl of 
Hertford and the other noblemen interested said 
that they were promises to advance and enrich 
them. So, the Earl of Hertford made himself 
Duke of Somerset, and made his brother Edward 
Seymour a baron; and there were various simi- 
lar promotions, all very agreeable to the parties 
concerned, and very dutiful, no doubt, to the 
late King's memory. To be more dutiful still, 
they made themselves rich out of the Church 
lands, and were very comfortable. The new 
Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declared 



Protector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the 
King. 

As young Edward the Sixth had been brought 
up in the principles of the Protestant religion, 
everybody knew that they would be maintained. 
But Cranmer, to whom they were chiefly in- 
trusted, advanced them steadily and temperate- 
ly. Many superstitious and ridiculous practices- 
were stopped ; but practices which were harm- 
less were not interfered with. 

The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was- 
anxious to have the young King engaged in 
1 marriage to the young Queen of Scotland, in 
: order to prevent that Princess from making an 
; alliance with any foreign power; but, as a large 
party in Scotland were unfavorable to this plan, 
he invaded that country. His excuse for doing 
I so was, that the Border men— that is, the Scotch 
| who lived in that part of the country where 
I England and Scotland joined — troubled the En- 
[ glish very much. But there were two sides to 
i this question; for the English Border men troub- 
j led the Scotch too ; and, through many long 
years, there were perpetual border quarrels, 
I which gave rise to numbers of old tales and 
1 songs. However, the Protector invaded Scot- 
land; and Arran, the Scottish Regent, -with an 
army twice as large as his, advanced to meet 
him. They encountered on the banks of the 
river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; 
and there, after a little skirmish, the Protector 
made such moderate proposals, in offering to re- 
tire if the Scotch would only engage not to- 
marry their Princess to any foreign Prince, that 
the Regent thought the English were afraid. 
But in this he made a horrible mistake; for the 
English soldiers on land, and the English sailors 
on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they 
broke and fled, and more than ten thousand of 
i them were killed. It was a dreadful battle, for 
i the fugitives were slain without mercy. The 
I ground for four miles, all the way to Edin- 
burgh, was strewn with dead men, and with 
arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid them- 
selves in streams, and were drowned; some 
threw away their armor, and were killed run- 
ning, almost naked; but in this battle of Pink- 
ney the English lost only two or three hundred 
I men. They were much better clothed than the 
Scotch; at the poverty of whose appearance and 
country they were exceedingly astonished. 

A Parliament was called when Somerset came 
back, and it repealed the whip with six strings, 
and did one or two other good things; though 
it unhappily retained the punishment of burning 
for those people who did not make believe to 
I believe, in all religious matters, what the Gov- 
ernment had declared that they must and should 
believe. It also made a foolish law (meant to 
put down beggars), that any man who lived 
idly and loitered about for three days together 
should be burned with a hot iron, made a slave,, 
1 and wear an iron fetter. But this savage ab- 
' surdity soon came to an end, and went the way 
of a great many other foolish laws. 

The Protector was now so proud that he sat 
in Parliament before all the nobles, on the right 
hand of the throne. Many other noblemen, 
who only wanted to be as proud if they could 
get a chance, became his enemies, of course: 
and it is supposed that he came back suddenly 
from Scotland because he had received news 
that his brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming 
dangerous to him. This lord was now High 
Admiral of England; a very handsome man, 
and a great favorite with the court ladies — even 
with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped 
with him a little more than young Princesses in 
these times do with any one. He had married' 
Catherine Parr, the late King's widow, who- 
was now dead; and, to strengthen his power,, 
he secretly supplied the young King witli 
money. He may even have engaged with some- 
of his brother's enemies in a plot to carry the 
boy off. On these and other accusations, at any 
rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, 
and found guilty ; his own brother's name being 
— unnatural and sad to tell — the first signed to 
the warrant for his execution. He was executed 
on Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. 
One of his last proceedings in this world was to 
write two letters, one to the Princess Elizabeth, 
and one to the Princess Mary, which a servant 
of his took charge of, and concealed in his shoe. 
These letters are supposed to have urged them 
against his brother, and to revenge his death. 
What they truly contained is not known ; but 
there is no doubt that he had, at one time, ob- 
tained great influence over the Princess Eliza- 
beth. 

All this while the Frotestant religion was 
making progress. The images, which the peo- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



4T 



pie had gradually come to worship, were re- 
moved from the churches; the people were in- 
formed that they need not confess themselves to 
priests unless they chose; a common Prayer- 
book was drawn up in the English language, 
which all could understand; and many other 
improvements were made; still moderately. For 
Cranmei- was a very moderate man, and even 
restrained the Protestant clergy from violently 
abusing the unret'ormed religion — as they very 
often did, and which was not a good example. 
But the people were at this time in great distress. 
The rapacious nobility, who had come into pos- 
session^ the Church lands, were very bad land- 
lords. They inclosed great quantities of ground 
for the feeding of sheep, which was then more 
profitable than the growing of crops; and this 
increased the general distress. So the people, 
who still understood little of what was going on 
about them, and still readily believed what the 
homeless monks told them— many of whom had 
been their good friends in their better days — 
took it into their heads that all (his was owing 
to the reformed religion, and therefore rose in 
many parts of the country. 

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire 
and Norfolk. In Devonshire the rebellion was 
so strong that ten thousand men united within 
a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But 
Lord Russell, coming to the assistance of the citi- 
zens who defended that town, defeated the 
rebels; and not only hanged the mayor of one 
jjlace, hut hanged the vicar of another from his 
own church steeple. What with hanging and 
killing by the sword, four thousand of the rebels 
are supposed to have fallen in that one county. 
In Norfolk (where the rising was more against 
the inclosure of open lands than against the re- 
formed religion), the popular leader was a man 
named Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. 
The mob were, in the first instance, excited 
against the tanner by one John Flowerdew, a 
gentleman who owed him a grudge; but the 
tanner was more than a match for the gentle- 
man, since he soon got the people on his side, 
and established himself near Norwich with quite 
an army. There was a. large oak-tree in that 
place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, which 
Ket named the Tree of Reformation ; and under 
its green boughs he and his men sat, in the mid- 
summer weather, holding courts of justice, and 
debating affairs of state. They were even im- 
partial enough to allow some rather tiresome 
public speakers to get up into this Tree of Ref- 
ormation, and point out their errors to them, 
in long discourses, while they 'lay listening (not 
always without some grumbling and growling) 
in the shade below. At last, one sunny July 
day. a herald appeared below the tree, and pro- 
claimed Ket and all his men traitors, unless 
from that moment they dispersed and went 
home: in which case they were to receive a par- 
don. But, Ket and his men made light of the 
herald, and became stronger than ever, until the 
Earl of Warwick went after them with a Suffi- 
cient force, and cut them all to pieces. A few 
were hanged, drown, and quartered, as traitors, 
and their limbs were sent into various country 
places to be a terror to the people. Nine of 
them were hanged upon nine green branches of 
the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, 
that tree may. be said to have withered away. 

The Protector, though a haughty man, had 
compassion for the real distresses of the com- 
mon people, and a sincere desire to help them. 
But he was too proud and too high in degree lo 
hold even their favor steadily; and many of the 
nobles always envied and hated him, because 
they were as proud and not as hign as he. He 
was at this time building a great Palace in the 
Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up 
church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled 
down bishops' houses: thus making himself 
still more disliked. At length, his principal 
' enemy, the Earl of Warwick— Dudley by name, 
and the son of that Dudley who had made him- 
self so odious with Empson, in the reign .of 
Henry the Seventh — joined with seven other 
members of the Council against him, formed a 
separate Council, and, becoming stronger in a 
few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty- 
nine articles of accusation. After being sen- 
tenced by the Council to the forfeiture of all his 
offices and lands, he was liberated and par- 
doned, on making a very humble submission. 
He was even taken back into the Council again, 
after having suffered this fall, and married his 
daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick's 
eldest son. But such a reconciliation was little 
liKely to last, and did not outlive a year. War- 
wick, having got himself made Duke of North- 
umberland, and having advanced the more im- 



portant of his friends, then finished the history 
by causing.the Duke of Somerset and his friend 
Lord Grey, and others, to be arrested for trea- 
son, in having conspired to seize and dethrone 
the King. They were also accused of having 
intended to seize the new Duke of Northumber- 
land, with his friends Lord Northampton and 
Lord Pembroke; to murder them if they found 
need ; and to raise the City to revolt. All this 
the fallen Protector positively denied; except 
that he confessed to having spoken of the mur- 
der of those three noblemen, but having never 
designed it. He was acquitted of the charge of 
treason, and found guilty of the other charges ; 
so when the people — who remembered his hav- 
ing been their friend, now that he was disgraced 
and in danger, saw him come out from his trial 
with the ax turned from him — they thought he 
was altogether acquitted, and set up a loud 
shout of joy. 

But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be 

beheaded on Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the 

morning, and proclamations wered issue bidding 

the citizens keep at home until after ten. They 

filled the streets, however, and crowded the 

place of execution as soon as it was light; and, 

with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once 

powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to lay 

his head upon the dreadful block. While he 

I was yet saying his last words to them with man- 

' ly courage, and telling them, in particular, how 

: it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted 

' in reforming the national religion, a member of 

| the Council was seen riding up on horseback. 

I They again thought that the Duke was saved 

! by his bringing a reprieve, and again shouted 

for joy. But the Duke himself toid them they 

| were mistaken, and laid down his head, and 

i had it struck off at a blow. 

Many of the bystauders rushed forward and 
steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a 
mark of their affection. He had, indeed, been 
capable of many good acts, and one of them 
was discovered after he was no more. The 
I Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had been 
informed against to the Council, when the Duke 
| was in power as having answered a treacherous 
letter proposing a rebellion against the reformed 
religion. As the answer could not be found, 
he could not be declared guilty; but it was now 
discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among 
some private papers, in his regard for that good 
man. The Bishop lost his office, and was de- 
prived of his possessions. 

It is not very pleasant to know that, while his 
uncle lay in prison under sentence of death, the 
young King was being vastly entertained by 
plays, and dances, and sham fights: but the~e 
is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal himself. 
It is pleasanter to know that not a single 
Roman Catholic was burnt in this reign for hold- 
ing that religion; though two wretched victims 
suffered for heresy. One, a woman named Joan 
Bocher, for professing some opinions that even 
she could only explain in unintelligible jargon. 
The other, a Dutchman, named Von Paris, who 
practiced as a surgeon in London. Edward 
was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign 
the warrant for the woman's execution: shed- 
ding tears before he did so, and telling Cran- 
mer, who urged him to do it (though Cranmcr 
really would have spared the woman at first, 
but for her own determind obstinacy), that the 
guilt was not his, but that of the man who so 
strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, 
too soon, whether the time ever came when 
Cranmer is likely to have remembered this with 
sorrow and remorse. 

Cranmer and Rid ley (at first Bishop of E oches- 
ter, and afterward Bishop of London) were the 
most powerful of the clergy of this reign. 
Others were imprisoned and deprived of their 
property for still adhering to the unreformed 
religion ; the most important among whom were 
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Heath, Bishop 
of Worcester; Day, Bishop of Chichester; and 
Bonner, that Bishop of London who was super- 
seded by Ridley. The Princess Mary, who in- 
herited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated 
the reformed religion as connected with her 
mother's wrongs and sorrows — she knew noth- 
ing else about it, always refusing to read a sin- 
gle book, in which it was truly described — held 
by the unreformed religion too, and was the 
only person in the kingdom for whom the old 
Mass was allowed to be performed ; nor would 
the young King have made that exception even 
in her favor, but for the strong Dersuasions of 
Cranmer and Ridley. He always viewed it 
with horror; and when he fell into a sickly con- 
dition, after having been very ill, first of the 
measles and then of the small-pox, he was 



. 



greatly troubled in mind to think that if he: 
died, and she, the next heir to the throne, suc- 
ceeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be- 
set up again. 

This uneasiness the Duke of Northumberland 
was not slow to encourage: for, if the Princess 
Mary came to the throne, he, who had taken 
part with the Protestants, was sure tc* be dis- 
graced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk was de- 
scended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if 
she resigned what little or no right she had in 
favor of her daughter Lady Jane Grey, that 
would be the succession to promote the Duke's 
i greatness; because Lord Guilford Dudley, one 
of his sons, was, at this very time, newly mar- 
ried to her. So, he worked upon the King's 
> fears, and persuaded him to set aside both the 
J Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and 
j assert his right to appoint his successor. Ac- 
j cordingly, the young King handed to the Crown 
; lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over 
! by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to suc- 
ceed to the crown, and requiring them to have 
his will made out according to law. They were 
much against it at first, and told the King so; 
but the Duke of Northumberland — being so vio- 
lent about it that the lawyers even expected him 
to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped 
to his shirt, he would'fight any man in such a 
quar';el— they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first 
hesiBted; pleading that he had sworn to main- 
tain the succession of the crown to the Princess 
Mary ; but, he was a weak man in his resolu- 
tion^ and afterward signed the document with 
the rest of the Council. 

It was completed none too soon; for Edward 

, was now sinking in a rapid decline; and, by 

, way of making him better, they handed him 

! over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be 

able to cure it. He speedily got worse. On 

the sixth of July, in the year one thousand live 

hundred and fifty-three, he died, very peaceably 

and piously, praying God, with his last breath,, 

to protect the reformed religion. 

This King died in the sixteenth year of his 
age, and irvthe seventh of his reign. It is diffi- 
cult to judge what the character of one so young 
might afterward have become among so many 
bad, ambitious, quarreling nobles. But, he was 
an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and bad 
nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposi- 
tion — which in the son of such a father is rather 
surprising. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

ENGLAND UNDER MART. 

The Duke of Northumberland was very" 
anxious to keep the young King's death a secret, 
in order that he might get the two Princesses into 
his power. But the Princess Mary, being 
informed of that event as she was on her way to 
London to see her sick brother, turned her 
horse's head, and rode away into Norfolk. The 
Earl of Arundel was her friend, and it was h§ 
who sent her warning of what had happened. 

As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of 
Northumberland and the Council sent for the 
Lord Mayor of London and some of the alder- 
men, and made a merit of telling it to them. 
Then they made it known to the people, and 
set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was 
to be Queen. 

She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was 
amiable, learned, and clever. When the lords 
who came to her fell on their knees before her, 
and told her what tidings they brought, she was 
so astonished that she fainted. On recovering, 
she expressed her sorrow for the young King's 
death, and said that she knew she was unfit to 
govern the kingdom; but that, if she must he 
Queen, she prayed God to direct her. She was 
then at Sion House, near Brentford ; and the 
lords took her down the river in state to the 
Tower, that she might remain there (as the cus- 
tom was) until she was crowned. But the 
people were not at all favorable to Lady Jane, 
considering that the right to be Queen was 
Mary's, and greatly disliking the Duke of 
Northumberland. They were not put into a 
better humor by the Duke's causing a vintner's 
servant, one Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for ex- 
pressing his dissatisfaction among the crowd, 
and to have liis ears nailed to the pillory, and 
cut off. Some powerful men among the no- 
bility declared on Mary's side. They raised 
troops to support her cause, had her proclaimed 
Queen at Norwich, and gathered around her at 
the Castle of Framlingham, which belonged to 
the Duke of Norfolk. For, she was not consid- 
ered so safe as yet, but that it was best to keep 



48 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she 
might be sent abroad, if necessary. 

The Council would have dispatched Lady 
Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, as the gen- 
eral of the army, against this force ; but, as Lady 
Jane implored that her father might remain with 
her, and as he was known to be but a weak 
man, tfiey told the Duke of Northumberland 
that he must take the command himself. He 
was not very ready to do so, as he mistrusted 
the Council much; but there was no help for it, 
and he set forth with a heavy heart, observing 
to a lord who rode beside him through Shore- 
ditch at the head of the troops, that, although 
the people pressed in great numbers to look at 
them, they were terribly silent. 

And his fears for himself turned out to be well 
founded. While he was waiting at Cambridge 
for further help from the Council, the Council 
took it into their heads to turn their backs on Lady 
Jane's cause, and to take up thePrincess,Mary's. 
This was chiefly owing to the before-mentioned 
Earl of Arundel, who represented to the Lord 
Mayor and aldermen, in a second interview with 
those sagacious persons, that, as for himself, he 
did not perceive the reformed religion to be in 
much danger — which Lord Pembroke backed by 
flourishing his sword as another kind of per- 
suasion. The Lord Mayor and aldermen, thus 
enlightened, said there could be no doubt that 
the Princess Mary ought to be Queen. £)o, she 
was proclaimed at the Cross by St. Paul s, and 
barrels of wine were given to the people, aud 
they got very drunk, and danced round blazing 
bonfires — little thinking, poor wretches, what 
other bonfires would soon be blazing in Queen 
Mary's name. 

After a ten days' dream of royalty, Lady Jane 
Grey resigned the crown with great willingness, 
saying that she had only accepted it in obedi- 
ence to her father and mother; and went gladly 
back to her pleasant house by the river, and her 
books. Mary then came on toward London; 
.and, at Wanstead, in Essex, was joined by her 
half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed 
through the streets of London to the Tower, and 
there the new Queen met some eminent prison- 
ers then confined in it, kissed them, and gave 
them their liberty. Among these was that 
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who had been 
imprisoned in the last reign for holding to the 
' unreformed religion. Him she soon made 
■Chancellor. 

The Duke of Northumberland had been taken 
prisoner, and together with his son and five 
others, was quickly brought before the Council. 
He, not unnaturally, asked that Council, in his 
defense, whether it was treason to obey orders 
that had been issued under the Great Seal; and, 
if it were, whether they, who had obeyed them 
too, ought to be his judges? But they made 
light of these points; and, being resolved to 
have him out of the way, soon sentenced him to 
death. He had risen into power upon the death 
of another man, and made but a poor show (as 
might be expected) when he himself lay low. 
• He entreated Gardiner to let him live, if it were 
only in a mouse's hole; and, when he ascended 
the scaffold to be beheaded on Tower Hill, ad- 
dressed the people in a miserable way, saying 
that he had been incited by others, and exhort- 
ing them to return to the unreformed religion, 
which he told them was his faith. There seems 
reason to suppose that he exppcted a pardon even 
then, in return for this confession; but it mat- 
ters little whether he did or not. His head was 
struck off. 

Mary was now crowned Queen. She was 
thirty-seven years of age, short and thin, 
wrinkled in face, and very unhealthy. But she 
had a great liking for show and for bright 
colors, and all the ladies of her court were mag- 
nificently dressed. She had a great liking, too, 
for old customs without much sense in them; 
and she was oiled in the oldest way, and blessed 
in the oldest way, and done all manner of things 
too in the oldest way, at her coronation. 1 hope 
they did her good. 

She soon began to show her desire to put 
down the reformed religion, and put up the un- 
reformed one: though it was dangerous work 
as yet, the people being something wiser than 
they used to be. They even cast a shower of 
stones— and among them a dagger — at one of 
the Royal chaplains who attacked.the reformed 
religion in a public sermon. But the Queen and 
her priests went steadily on. Ridley, the pow- 
erful bishop of the last reign, was seized and 
sent to the Tower. Latimer, also celebrated 
among the clergy of the last reign, was likewise 
sent to the Tower, and Cranmer speedily fol- 
lowed. Latimer was an aged man; and as his 



guards took him through Smithfield, he looked 
round it, and said, "This is a place that hath 
long groaned for me." For he knew well what 
kind of bonfires would soon be burning. Nor 
was the knowledge confined to him. The 
prisons were fast filled with the chief Protest- 
ants, who were there left rotting in darkness, 
hunger, dirt, and separation from. their friends; 
many, who had time left them for escape, fled 
from the kingdom; and the dullest of the ]>eople 
began, now, to see what was coming. 

It came on fast. A Parliament was got 
together; not without strong suspicion of un- 
fairness ; and they annulled the divorce, formerly 
pronounced by Qranmer between the Queen's 
mother and King Henry the Eighth, and un- 
made all the laws on the subject of religion that 
had been made in the last King Edward's reign. 
They began their proceedings, in violation of 
the law, by having the old mass said before 
them in Latin, and by turning out a bishop who 
would r*>t kneel down. They also declared 
guilty of treason Lady Jane Grey for aspiring to 
the crown; her husband, for being her husband, 
and Cranmer for not believing in the mass afore- 
said. They then prayed the Queen graciously 
to choose a husband for herself as soon as might 
be. 

Now, the question who should be the Queen's 
husband had given rise to a great deal of discus- 
sion, and to several contending parties. Some 
said Cardinal Pole was the man — but the Queen 
was of opinion that he was not the man, he 
being too old and too much of a student. 
Others said that the gallant young Courtenay, 
whom the Queen had made Earl of Devonshire, 
was the man — and the Queen thought so too for 
awhile; but she changed her mind. At last it 
appeared that Philip, Prince of Spain, was cer- 
tainly the man — though certainly not the 
people's man; for they detested the idea of such 
a marriage from the beginning to the end, and 
murmured that the Spaniard would establish in 
England, by the aid of foreign soldiers, the 
worst abuses of the Popish religion, and even 
the terrible Inquisition itself. 

These discontents gave rise to a conspiracy 
for marrying young Courtenay to the Princess 
Elizabeth, and setting them up, with popular 
tumults all over the kingdom, against the 
Qu^sn. This was discovered in time by Gar- 
diner; but in Kent, the old bold county, the 
people rose in their old bold way. Sir Thomas 
Wyat, a man of great daring, was their leader. 
He raised his standard at Maidstone, marched 
on to Rochester, established himself in the old 
castle there, and prepared to hold out against 
the Duke of Norfolk, who came against him 
with a party of the Queen's guards, and a body 
of five hundred London men. The London 
men, however, were all for Elizabeth, and not 
at all for Mary. They declared, under the 
castle walls, for Wyat; the Duke retreated; and 
Wyat came on to Deptford, at the head of 
fifteen thousand men. 

But these, in their turn, fell away. When he 
came to Southwark, there were only two thou- 
sand left. Not dismayed by finding the London 
citizens in arms, and the guns at the Tower 
ready to oppose his crossing the river there, 
Wyat led them off to Kingston-upon-Thames, 
intending to cross the bridge that he knew to be 
in that place, and so to work his way round to 
Ludgate, one of the old gates of the City. He 
found the bridge broken down, but mended it, 
came across, and bravely fought his way up 
Fleet Street to Ludgate Hill. Finding the gate 
closed against him, he fought his way back 
again, sword in hand, to Temple Bar. Here, 
being overpowered, he surrendered himself, and 
three or four hundred of his men were taken, 
besides a hundred killed. Wyat, in a moment 
of weakness (and perhaps of torture) was after- 
ward made to accuse the Princess Elizabeth as 
his accomplice to some very small extent. But 
his manhood soon returned to him, and he re- 
fused to save his life by making any more false 
confessions. He was quartered and distributed 
in the usual brutal way, and from fifty to a hun- 
dred of his followers were hanged. The rest 
were led out, with halters round their necks, to 
be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying 
out, " God save Queen Mary!" 

In the danger of this rebellion the Queen 
showed herself to be a woman of courage and 
spirit. She disdained to retreat to any place of 
safety, and went down to the Guildhall, scepter 
•in hand, and made a gallant speech to the Lord 
Mayor and citizens. But, on the day after 
Wyat's defeat, she did the most cruel act, even 
of her cruel reign, in signing the warrant for 
the execution of Lady Jane Grey. 



They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept 
the unreformed religion; but she steadily re- 
fused. On the morning when she was to die, 
she saw from her window the bleeding and 
headless body of her husband brought back in 
a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill, where 
he had laid down his life. But, as she had de- 
clined to see him before nis execution, lest she 
should be overpowered and not make a good 
end, so she even now showed a constancy and 
calmness that will never be forgotten. She 
came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a 
quiet face, and addressed the bystanders in a 
steady voice. They were not numerous; for 
she was too young, too innocent and fair, to be 
murdered before the people on Tower Hill, as 
her husband had just been; so, the place of her 
execution was within the Tower itself. She 
said that she had done an unlawful act in taking 
what was Queen Mary's right; but that she had 
done so with no bad intent, and that she died a 
humble Christian. She begged the executioner 
to dispatch her quickly, and she asked him, 
" Will you take my head off before I lay me 
down?" He answered, "No, madam," and 
then she was very quiet while they bandaged 
her eyes. Being blinded, and unable to see the 
block on which she was to lay her young head, 
she was seen to feel about for it with her hands, 
and was heard to say, confused, " Oh what 
shall I do? Where is it?" Then they guided 
her to the right place, and the executioner 
struck off her head. You know too well, now, 
what dreadful deeds the executioner did in 
England, through many, man3 r years, and how 
his ax descended on the hateful block through 
the necks of some of the bravest, wisest, and 
best in the land. But it never struck so cruel 
and so vile a blow as this. 

The father of Lady Jane soon followed, but 
was little pitied. Queen Mary's next object 
was to lay hold of Elizabeth, and this was pur- 
sued with great eagerness. Five hundred men 
were sent to her retired house at Ashridge, by 
Berkhampstead, with orders to bring her up, 
alive or dead. They got there at ten at night, 
when she was sick in bed. But, their leaders 
followed her lady into her bedchamber, whence 
she was brought out betimes next morning, and 
put into a litter, to be conveyed to London. She 
was so weak and ill, that she was five days on 
the road; still, she was so resolved to be seen by 
the people that she had the curtains of /the litter 
opened; and so, very pale and sickly, passed 
through the streets. She wrote to her sister, 
saying she was .innocent of any crime, and ask- 
ing why she was made a prisoner ; but she got 
no answer, and was ordered to the Tower. 
They took her in by the Traitor's Gate, to which 
she objected, but in vain. One of the lords who 
conveyed her offered to cover her with his cloak, 
as it was raining, but she put it away from her 
proudly and scornfully, and passed into the 
Tower, and sat down in a courtyard on a stone. 
They besought her to come in out of the wet; 
but she answered that it was better sittirig there 
than in a worse place. At length she went to 
her apartment, where she was kept a prisoner, 
though not so close a prisoner as at Woodstock, 
whither she was afterward removed, and where 
she is said to have one day envied a milkmaid 
whom she heard singing in the sunshine as she 
went through the green fields. Gardiner, than 
whom there were not many worse men among 
the fierce and sullen priests, cared little to keep 
secret his stern desire for her death: being used 
to say that it was of little service to shake off the 
leaves, and lop the branches of the tree of 
heresy, if its root, the hope of heretics, were 
left. He failed, however, in his benevolent de- 
sign. Elizabeth was at length released; and 
Hatfield House was assigned to her as a resi- 
dence, under the care of one Sir Thomas Pope. 

It would seem that Philip, the Prince of 
Spain, was a main cause of this change in Eliza- 
beth's fortunes. He was not an amiable man, 
being, on the contrary, proud, overbearing, and 
gloomy; but he and the Spanish lords who came 
over with him assuredly did discountenance the 
idea of doing any violence to the Princess. It 
may have been mere prudence, but we will hope 
it was manhood and honor. The Queen had 
been expecting her husband with great im- 
patience, and at length he came, to her great joy, 
though he never cared much for her. They 
were married by Gardiner, at Winchester, and 
there was more holiday-making among the 
people; but they had their old distrust of this 
Spanish marriage, in which even the Parliament 
shared. Though the members of that Parlia- 
ment were far from honest, and were strongly 
suspected to have been bought with Spanish 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



49 



money, they would pass no bill to enable the 
Queen to set aside the Princess Elizabeth and 
appoint her own successor. 

Although Gardiner failed in this object, as 
well as in the darker one of bringing the 
Princess to the scaffold, he went on at a great 
pace in the revival of the unreformed religion. 
A new Parliament was packed, in which there 
were no Protestants. Preparations were made 
to receive Cardinal Pole in England as the 
Pope's messenger, bringing his holy declaration 
that, all the nobility wlio had acquired Church 
property should keep it— which was done to en- 
list their selfish interest on the Pope's side. 
Then a great scene was enacted, which was the 
triumph of the Queen's plans. Cardinal Pole 
arrived in great splendor and dignity, and was 
received with great pomp. The Parliament 
joined in a petition expressive of their sorrow at 
the change in the national religion, and praying 
him to receive the country again into the Popish 
Church. With the Queen sitting on her throne, 
and the King on one side of her, and the Car- 
dinal on the other, and the Parliament present, 
Gardiner read the petition aloud. The Cardinal 
then made a great speech, and was so obliging 
as to say that all was forgotten and forgiven, 
and that the kingdom was solemnly made Roman 
Catholic again. 

Everything was now ready for the lighting of 
the terrible bonfires. The Queen having de- 
clared to the Council in writing, that she 
would wish none of her subjects to be burnt 
without some of the Council being present, and 
that she would particularly wish there to be 
good sermons at all burnings, the Council knew 
pretty well what was to be done next. So, after 
the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a 
preface to the burnings, the Chancellor Gardiner 
opened a High Court at St. Mary Overy, on the 
Southwark side of London Bridge, for the trial 
of heretics. Here, two of the late Protestant 
clergymen, Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and 
Rogers, a Prebendary of St. Paul's, were 
brought to be tried. Hooper was tried first for 
being married, though a priest, and for not be- 
lieving in the mass. He admitted both of these 
accusations, and said that the mass was a 
wicked imposition. Then tbey tried Rogers, 
who said the same. Next morning the two were 
brought up to be sentenced; and then Rogers 
said that his poor wife, being a German woman 
anil a stranger in the land, he hoped might 
be allowed to come to speak to him before he 
died. To this the inhuman Gardiner replied 
that she was not his wife. " Yea, but she is, 
my lord," said Rogers, " and she hath been my 
wife these eighteen years." His request was 
still refused, and they were both sent to New- 
gate; all those who stood in the streets to sell 
things being ordered to put out their lights that 
the people might not see them. But, the people 
stood at their doors with candles in their hands, 
and prayed for them as they went by. Soon 
afterward Rogers was taken out of jail to be 
burnt in Smithfield; and, in the crowd as he 
weut along, he saw his poor wife and his ten 
children, of whom the youngest was a little 
baby. And so he was burnt to death. 

The next day, Hooper, who was to be burnt 
at Gloucester, was brought out to take his last 
journey, and was made to wear a hood over 
his face, that he might not be known by the 
people. But, they did know him for all that, 
down in his own part of the country; and, 
when he came near Gloucester, they lined the 
road, making prayers and lamentations. His 
guards took him to a lodging, where he 
slept soundly all night. At nine o'clock next 
morning he was brought forth leaning on a 
staff; for he had taken cold in prison and was 
infirm The iron stake, and the iron chain 
which was to bind him to it, were fixed up near 
a great elm-tree in a pleasant open place before 
the cathedral where, on peaceful Sundays, he 
had been accustomed to preach and to pray 
when he was Bishop of Gloucester. This tree, 
which had no leaves then, it being February, 
was tilled with people; and the priests of Glou- 
cester College were looking complacently oh 
from a window, and there was a great con- 
course of spectators in every spot from which a 
glimpse of the dreadful sight could be beheld. 
When the old man kneeled down on the small 
platform at the foot of the stake, and prayed 
aloud, the nearest people were observed to be so 
attentive to his prayers that they were ordered 
to stand further back; for it did not suit the 
Romish Church to have those Protestant words 
heard. His prayers concluded, he went up to 
the stake, and was stripped to his shirt, and 
chained ready for the fire. One of his guards 



had such compassion on him that, to shorten 
his agonies, he tied some packets of gunpowder 
about him. Then they heaped up'wood and 
straw and reeds, and set them all alight. But, 
unhappily the wood was green and damp, ard 
there was a wind blowing that blew what flame 
there was away. Thus, through three quarters 
of an hour, the good old man was scorched and 
roasted and smoked, as the fire rose and sank ; 
and all that time they saw him, as he burned, 
moving his lips iu'prayer, and beating his breast 
with one hand, even after the other was burnt 
away and had fallen off. 

.Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were taken to 
Oxford to dispute with a commission of priests 
and doctors about the mass. They were shame- 
fully treated; and it is recorded that the Oxford 
scholars hissed and howled and groaned, and 
misconducted themselves in anything but a 
scholarly way. Tlie prisoners were taken back 
to jail, and afterward tried in St. Mary's 
Church. They were all found guilty. On the 
sixteenth of tlie month of October, Ridley and 
Latimer were brought out, to make another of 
the dreadful bonfires. 

The scene of the suffering of these two good 
Protestant men was in the city ditch, near Bal- 
iol College. On coming to the dreadful spot, 
they kissed the stakes, and then embraced each 
other. And then a learned doctor got up into a 
pulpit which was placed there, and preached a 
sermon from the text, " Though I give my body 
to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth 
me nothing." When you think of the charity 
of burning men alive, you may imagine that 
this learned doctor had a rather brazen face. 
Ridley would have answered this sermon wheu 
it came to an end, but was not allowed. When 
Latimer was stripped, it appeared that he had 
dressed himself, under his other clothes, in a 
new shroud; and, as he stood in it before all the 
people, it was noted of him, and long re- 
membered, that whereas he had been stooping 
and feeble but a few minutes before, he now 
stood upright aud handsome, in the knowledge 
that he was dyiug fdr a just and a great cause. 
Ridley's brother-in-law was there with bags of 
gunpowder; and, when they were both chained 
up, he tied them round their bodies. Then, a 
light was thrown upon the pile to fire it. " Be of 
good comfort, Master Ridley." said Latimer at 
that awful moment " and play the man ! We 
shall this day light such a candle, by God's 
grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put 
out." And then he was seen to make motions 
with his hands as if he were washing them in 
the flames, and to stroke his aged face with 
them, and was heard to cry, " Father of Heaven, 
receive my soul!" He died quickly, but the 
fire, after having burned the legs of Ridley, 
sunk. There he lingered, chained to the iron 
post, and crying, " Oh! I cannot burn! Oh! for 
Christ's sake let the fire come unto me?" And 
still, when his brother-in-law had heaped on 
more wood, he was heard through the blinding 
smoke still dismally crying, " Oh! I cannot 
burn, I cannot burn!" At last the gunpowder 
caught fire, and ended his miseries. 

Five days after this fearful scene, Gardiner 
went to his tremendous account before God for 
the cruelties he had ao much assisted in com- 
mitting. 

Cranmer remained still alive and in prison. 
He was brought out again in February, for 
more examining and trying, by Bonner, Bishop 
of London: another man of blood, who had 
succeeded to Gardiner's work, even in his life- 
time, wheu Gardiner was tired of it. Cranmer 
was now degraded as a priest, and left for 
death; but, if the Queen hated any one on 
earth, she hated him, and it was resolved that 
he should be ruined and disgraced to the ut- 
most. There is no doubt that the Queen and 
her husband personally urged on these deeds, 
because they wrote to the Council, urging them 
to be active in the kindling of the fearful fires. As 
Cranmer was known not to be a firm man, a 
plan was laid for surrounding him with artful 
people, and inducing him to recant to the unre- 
fornied religion. Deans aud friars visited him, 
played at bowls with him, showed him Various 
attentions, talked persuasively with him, gave 
him money for his prison comforts, and induced 
him to sign, I fear, as many as six recantations. 
But wheu, after all, he was taken out to be 
burnt, he was nobly true to his better self, and 
made a glorious end. 

After prayers aud a sermon, Doctor Cole, the 
preacher of the day (who had been one of the 
artful priests about Cranmer in prison), required 
him to make a public confession of his faith be- 
fore the people. This Cole did, expecting that 



he would declare himself a Roman Catholic. 
"I will make a profession of my faith," said 
Cranmer, " and with a good will too." 

Then, he arose before them all, and took from 
the sleeve of his robe a written prayer, and read 
it aloud. That done, he kneeled and said the 
Lord's Prayer, all the people joining; and then 
he arose again, and told them that he be- 
lieved in the Bible, and that, in what he had 
lately written, he had written what was not the 
truth, and that, because his richt hand had 
signed those papers, he would burn his right 
hand first when he came to the fire. As for the 
Pope, he did refuse him and denounce him as 
the enemy of Heaven. Hereupon the pious 
Doctor Cole cried out to the guards to stop that 
heretic's mouth, and take him away. 

So they took him away, and chained him to 
the stake, where he hastily took off his own 
clothes to make ready for the flames. And he 
stood before the people with a bald head and a 
white and flowing beard. He was so firm now, 
when the worst was come, that he again de- 
clared against his recantation, and was so im- 
pressive and so undismayed, that a certain 
lord, who was one of the directors of the execu- 
tion, called out to the men to make haste! 
When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to his 
latest word, stretched out his right hand, and 
crying out, "This hand hath offended!" held 
it among the flames until it blazed and burned 
away. His heart was found entire among his 
ashes, and he left at last a memorable name in 
English history. Cardinal Pole celebrated the 
day by saying his first mass, and next day, he 
was made Archbishop of Canterbury in Cran- 
mer 's place. 

The Queen's husband, who was now mostly 
abroad in his own dominions, and generally 
made a coarse jest of her to his more familiar 
courtiers, was at war with France, aud came 
over to seek the assistance of England. England 
was very unwilling to engage in a French war 
for his sake; but it happened that the King of 
France, at this very time, aided a descent upon 
the English coast;. Hence, war was declared, 
greatly to Philip's satisfaction: and the Queen 
raised a sum of money with which to carry it 
on, by every unjustifiable means in her power. 
It met with no profitable return, for the French 
Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the En- 
glish sustained a complete defeat. The loss, is 
they met with, in France greatly mortified the 
national pride, and the Queen never recovered 
the blow. 

There was a bad fever raging in England at 
this time, and I am glad to write that the Queen 
took it, and the hour of her death came. 
"When I am dead gnd my body is opened." 
she said to those around her, "ye shall find 
Calais written on my heart." I should have 
thought, if anything were written on it, they 
would, have found the words — Jane Grew 
Hooper, Rogers. Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer. and 
three hundred people burnt alive within four 
years of my wicked reign, including sixty 
women and forty little children. But it is 
enough that their deaths were written in 
Heaven. 

The Queen died on the seventeenth of Novem- 
ber, fifteen hundred and fifty-eight, after reign- 
ing not quite five years and a half, and in the 
forty-fourth year of her age Cardinal Pole 
died of the same fever next day. 

As Bloody Queen Mary this woman has be- 
come famous, and as Bloody Queen Mary she 
will ever be justly remembered with horror and 
detestation in Great Britain. Her memory has 
been held in such abhorrence that some writers 
have arisen in later years to taue her part, and 
to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an 
amiable and cheerful sovereign! '"By their 
fruits ye shall know fhem, ' ' said Our Saviour. 
The stake and the fire were the fruits of this 
reign, and you will judge this Queen by nothing- 
else. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ENGLAND UNDER, ELIZABETH. 

There was great rejoicing all over the laud 
when the Lords of the Council went down to 
Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the 
new Queen of England. Weary of the barbar- 
ities of Mary's reign, the people looked with 
hope and gladness to the new sovereign. The 
nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream; 
and Heaven, so long hidden by the smoke of the 
fires that roasted men and women to death, ap- 
peared to brighten once more. 

Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years- 



5'0 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF E^GLAiXI). 



of age when she rode through the streets of 
London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, 
to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly 
marked, but, on the whole, commanding and 
dignified; her hair was red, and her nose some- 
thing too long and sharp for a woman's. She 
was not the beautiful creature her courtiers 
made out; but she was well enough, and uo 
doubt looked all the better for coming after the 
dark and gloomy Mary. She was well edu- 
cated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a 
hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, 
-but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much 
of her father's violent temper. I mention this 
now, because she has been so over-praised by 
one party, and so over-abused hj another, that 
it is hardly-possible to understand the greater 
part of her reign without first understanding 
what kind of woman she really was. 

She began her reign with the great advantage 
of having a very wise and careful Minister, Sir 
William Cecil, whom she afterward made Lord 
Burleigh. Altogether, the people had greater 
reason for rejoicing than they usually had when 
there were processions in the streets; and they 
were happy with some reason. All kinds of 
shows and images were set up; Gog and Magog 
were hoisted to the top of Temple Bar; and 
(which was more to the purpose) the Corpora- 
tion dutifully presented the young Queen with 
the sum of a thousand marks in gold — so heavy 
a present, that she was obliged to take it into 
ber carriage with both hands. The coronation 
w T as a great success; and, on the next day, one 
of the courtiers presented a petition to the new 
Queen, praying that as it was the custom to re- 
lease some prisoners on such occasions, she 
would have the goodness to release the four 
Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 
and also the Apostle St. Paul, who had been 
for some time shut up in a strange language, so 
that the people could not get at them. 

To this the Queen replied that it would be bet- 
ter first to inquire of themselves whether they 
desired to be released or not; and, as a means 
of finding out, a great public discussion — a sort 
of religious tournament — was appointed to take 
place between certain champions of the two re- 
ligions in Westminster Abbey. You may sup- 
pose that it was soon made pretty clear to com- 
mon sense that, for people to benefit by what 
they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they 
should understand something about it. Accoid- 
ingly, a Church Service in plain English was 
settled, and other laws and regulations were 
made, completely establishing the great work 
of the Reformation. The Romish bishops and 
champions were not harshly dealt with, all 
things considered, and the Queen's Ministers 
were both prudent and merciful. 

The one great trouble of this reign, and the 
nnf ortanate cause of the greater part of such tur- 
moil and bloodshed as occurred in it, was Mary 
Stuart, Queen of Scots. We will try to under- 
stand, in as few words as possible, who Mary 
was, what she was, and how she came to be a 
thorn in the Royal pillow of Elizabeth. 

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of 
Scotland, Mary of Guise. She had been mar- 
ried, when a mere child, to the Dauphin, the 
son and heir of the King of France. The Pope, 
who pretended that no one could rightfully 
wear the crown of England without his gra- 
cious permission, was strongly opposed to Eliza- 
beth, who had not asked for the said gracious 
permission. And as Mary Queen of Scots 
would have inherited the English crown in 
right fit her birth, supposing the English Par- 
liament not to have altered the succession, the 
Pope himself, and most of the discontented 
who were followers of his, maintained that 
Mary was the rightful Queen of England, and 
Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary being so 
closely connected with Prance, and Prance 
beinu' jealous of England, there was far 'greater 
danger in this than there would have been if she 
had had no alliance with that great power. And 
when her young husband, on the death of his 
fathi , became Francis the Second, King of 
France, " e matter grew very serious. For, the 
young couple styled themselves King and Queen 
of England, and the Pope was disposed to help 
them by doing all the mischief he could. 

Kow, the reformed religion, under the guid- 
ance of a stern and powerful preacher, named 
John Knox, and other such men, had been mak- 
ing fierce progress in Scotland. It was still a 
half savage country, where there was a great 
deal of murdering and rioting continually going 
on; and the Reformers, instead of reforming 
those evils as they should have done, went to 
"work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying 



churches and chapels waste, pulling down pict- 
ures and altars, and knocking about the Gray 
Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White 
Friars, and the friars of all sorts of colors, in all 
directions. This obdurate and harsh spirit of 
the Scottish Reformers (the Scotch have always 
been rather a sullen and frowning people in re- 
ligious matters) put up the blood of the Romish 
French court, and caused France to send troops 
over to Scotland, with the hope of setting the 
friars of all sorts of colors on their legs again; 
of conquering that country first, and England 
afterward; and so crushing the Reformation all 
to pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who had 
formed a great league which they called The 
Congregation of the Lord, secretly represented 
to Elizabeth that, if the reformed religion got 
the worst of it with them, it would be likely to 
get the worst of it in England too; and thus 
Elizabeth, though she had a high notion of the 
rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they 
liked, sent an army to Scotland to support the 
Reformers, who were in arms against their Sov- 
ereign. All these proceedings led to a treaty of 
peace at Edinburgh, under which the French 
consented to depart from the kingdom. By a 
separate treaty, Mary and her young husband 
engaged to renounce their assumed title of King 
and Queen of England. But this treaty they 
never fulfilled. 

It happened, soon after matters had got to 
this state, that the young French King died, 
leaving Mary a young widow. She was then 
invited by her Scottish subjects to return home 
and reign over them; and, as she was not now 
happy where she was, she, after a little time, 
complied. 

Elizabeth had been Queen three years, when 
Mary Queen of Scots embarked at Calais for her 
own rough quarreling country. As she came 
out of the harbor, a vessel was lost before her 
eyes, and she said, " Oh, good God! what an 
omen this is for such a voyage!" She was very 
fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking 
back at it and weeping, until it was quite dark. 
When she went to bed, she- directed to be called 
at daybreak if the French coast were still visi- 
ble, that she might behold it for the last time. 
As it proved to be a clear morning, this was 
done, and-she again wept for the country she 
was leaving, and said many times, "Farewell, 
France! Farewell, France! I shall never see 
thee again!" All this was long remembered 
afterward, as sorrowful and interesting in a fair 
young Princess of nineteen. Indeed, I am 
afraid it gradually came, together with her other 
distresses, to surround her with greater sj'mpa- j 
thy than tihe deserved. 

When she came to Scotland, and took up her 
abode at the palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh, 
she found herself among uncouth strangers and 
wild uncomfortable customs, very different from 
her experiences in the court of France. The 
very people who were disposed to love her made 
her head ache, when she was tired out by her 
voyage, with a serenade of discordant music— a 
fearful concert of bagpipes, 1 suppose— and 
brought her and her train home to her palace on 
miserable little Scotch horses that appeared to 
be half starved. Among the people who were 
not disposed to love her, she found the power- 
ful leaders of the Reformed Church, who weie l 
bitter upon her amusements, however innocent, * 
and denounced music and dancing as works of 
the devil. John Knox himself often lectured 
her violently aud angrily, anTTdid much to make 
her life unhapp3 r . All these reasons confirmed 
her old attachment to the Romish religion, and 
caused her, there is no doubt, most imprudently 
and dangerously both for herself and for England 
too, to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the 
Romish Church that, if she ever succeeded to 
the English crown, she would set up that relig- 
ion again. In reading her unhappy history, 
you must always remember this; and also that 
during her whole life she was constantly put 
forward against the Queen, in some form or i 
other, by the Romish party. 

That Elizabeth, on the other hand, was not 
inclined to like her, is pretty certain. Eliza- 
beth was very vain and jealous, and had an ex- 
traordinary dislike to people being married. 
She treated Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the 
beheaded Lady Jane, with such shameful se- 
verity, for no other reason than her being secret- 
ly married, that she died, and her husband was 
ruined; so, when a second maniage for Mary 
began to be talked about probably Elizabeth 
disliked he)' more. Not that Elizabeth wanted 
suitors of her own, for they started up from 
Spain. Austria, Sweden, and England. Her 
English lover at this time, and one whom she 



much favored too, was Lord Robert Dudley, ' 
Earl of Leicester — himself secretly married to 
Amy Robsart, the daughter of an English gentle- 
man, whom he was strongly suspected of caus- 
ing to be murdered, down at his country seat, 
Cumnor Hall, in Berkshire, that he might be 
free to marry the Queen. Upon this story the 
great writer, Sir Walter Scott, has founded one 
of his best romances. But if Elizabeth knew 
how to lead her handsome favorite on, for her 
own vanity and pleasure, she knew how to stop 
him for her own pride; and his love, and all the 
other proposals, came to nothing. The Queen 
always declared, in good set speeches, that she 
would never be married at all, but would live 
and die a Maiden Queen. It was a very pleas- 
ant and meritorious declaration, I suppose; but 
it has been puffed and trumpeted so much, that 
I am rather tired of it myself. 

Divers Princes proposed to marry Mary, but 
the English court had reasons for being jealous 
of them all, and even proposed as a matter of 
policy that she should marry that very Earl of 
Leicester svho had aspired to be the husband of 
Elizabeth. At last. Lord Darnley. sou of the 
Earl of Lennox, and himself descended from the 
Royal Family of Scotland, went over with 
Elizabeth s consent to try his fortune at Holy- 
rood. He was a tall simpleton ; aud could dance 
and play the guitar; but I know of nothing else 
he could do, unless it were to get very drunk, 
and eat gluttonously, aud make a contemptible 
spectacle of himself in many mean and vain 
ways. However, he gained Mary's heart, not 
disdaining, in the pursuit of his object, to ally 
himself with one of her secretaries, David Riz- 
zio, who had great influence with her. He soon 
married the Queec. This marriage does not say 
much for her. But what followed will present- 
ly say less. 

Mary's brother, the Earl of Murray, and head 
of the Protestant party in'Scotland, had opposed 
this marriage, partly on religious grounds, and 
partly, perhaps, from personal cirslike of the 
very contemptible bridegroom. When it had 
taken place, through Mary's gaining over to it 
the more powerful of the lords about her, she 
banished Murray for his pains; and, when he 
and some other nobles rose in arms to support 
the reformed religion, she herself, within a 
month of her wedding-day, rode against them 
in armor, with loaded pistols in her saddle. 
Driven out of Scotland, they presented them- 
selves before Elizabeth — who called them trait- 
ors in public, and assisted them in private, ac- 
cording to her crafty nature. 

Mary had been married but a little while, 
when she began to hate her husband, who, in 
his turn began to hate that David Rizzio with 
whom lie had leagued to gain her favor, and 
whom he now believed to be her lover. He 
hated Rizzio to that extent, that he made a 
compact with Lord Ruth ven -and three other 
lords to get rid of him by murder. This wicked 
agreement they made in solemn secrecy upon 
the first of March, fifteen hundred and sixty- 
six, and, on the night of Saturday the ninth, 
the conspirators were brought by Darnley up a 
private staircase, dark and steep, into a range 
of rooms where they knew that Mary was sit- 
ting at supper with her sister, Lady Argyle, and 
this doomed man. When they went into the 
room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, 
and Lord Ruthven, who had risen from a bed 
of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt 
and ghastly leaning on two men. Rizzio ran 
behind the Queen for shelter and protection. 
" Let him come out of the room," said Ruth- 
ven. "He shall not leave the room," replied 
the Queen; "I read his danger in your face, 
and it is my will that he remain here." They 
then set upon him, struggled with him, over- 
turned the. table, dragged him out, and killed 
him with fifty-six stabs. When the Queen , 
heard that he was dead, she said, "No more 
tears. I will think now of revenge!" 

Within a day or two she gained her husband 
over, and prevailed on the tall idiot to abandon 
the conspirators and fly with her to Dunbar. 
There he issued a proclamation, audaciously 
and falsely denying that he had any knowledge 
of the late bloody business; and there they 
were joined by tlie Earl Bothwell and some 
other nobles. With their help, they raised eight 
thousand men, returned to Edinburgh, and 
drove the assassins into England. Mary soon 
afterward gave birth to a son — still thinking of 
revenge. 

That she should have had a greater scorn for 
her husband, after his late cowardice and 
treachery, than she had had before, was natural 
enough. There is little doubt that she now 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



51 



be^an to love Bothwell instead, and to plan 
with him means of getting rid of Darnlev. 
Bothwell had such power over her that he in- 
duced her even to pardon the assassins of Rizzio. 
The arrangements for the christening of the 
youu" Prince were intrusted to him, and he 
was one of the most important people at the 
ceremony, where the child was named James: 
Elizabeth being his godmother, though not pres- 
ent on the occasion. A week afterward. Darn- 
ley, who had left Mary and gone to his father's 
house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the small- 
pox, she sent her own physician to attend him. 
But there is reason to apprehend that this was 
merely a show and a pretense, and that she knew 
what was doing, when Bothwell within another 
mouth proposed to one of the late conspirators 
against Rizzio to murder Darnley. ''for that it 
was the Queen's mind that he should be taken 
away." It is certain that on that very day she 
wrote to her embassador in France, complain- 
ing of him, and yet went immediately to Glas- 
gow, feigning to he very anxious ahout him, 
and to love him very much. If she wanted to 
get him in her power, she succeeded to her 
heart's content; for she induced him to go back 
with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy, instead 
of the palace, a lone house outside the city, 
called the Kirk of Field. Here he lived for 
ahout a week 



shore sbe was met by another Doualas, and some 
few lords; and, so accompanied rode away on 
horseback to Hamilton, where they raised three 
thousand men. Here she issued a proclamation 
declaring that the abdication she had signed in 
her prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent 
to yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady 
soldier, and in no way discomposed, although 
he was without an army, Murray pretended to 
treat with her until he had collected a force 
about half equal to her own, and then he gave 
her battle. In one quarter of an hour he cut 
down all her hopes. She had another weary 
ride on horseback of sixty long Scutch miles, 
and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey, whence 
she fled for safety to Elizabeth's dominions. 

Mary Queen of Scots came to England — to 
her own ruin, the trouble of the kingdom, and 
the misery and death of many — in the year one 
thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How 
she left it and the world, nineteen years after- 
ward, we have now to see. 



■ 



Second Paet. 



When Mary Queen of Scots arrived in Eng- 
land, without mone}-, and even without any 
i other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to 
Elizabeth, representing herself as an innocent 
One Suuday night she remained ' and injured piece of Royalty, and entreating 
with him until ten o'clock, and then left him to : her assistance to oblige her Scottish subject.-- to 
go to Holyrood, to be present at an entertain- take her back again and obey her. But, as her 
in _ ive'u in celebration of the marriageof one ! character was already known in England to be 
of her favorite servants. At two o'clock in the. ] a very different one from what she made it out 
morning the city was shaken by a great explo- ; to be, she was told in answer that she must first 
sion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms, clear herself. Made uneasy by this condition, 
Darnley's body was found next day lying . Mary, rather than stay in England, would have 
under a tree at some distance. How it came gone to Spain, or to France, or would even have 
there, undisiigured and unscorched by gun- 1 gone back to Scotland. But, as her doing either 



powder, and how this crime came to be so 
clumsily aud strangely committed, it is impos- 
sible to discover. The deceitful character of 
Mary and the deceitful character of Elizabeth 



would have been likely to trouble England 
afresh, it was decided that she should be de- 
tained here. She first came to Carlisle, and, 
after that, was moved about from castle to cas 



have rendered almost every part of their joint ] tie, as was considered necessary; but England 
history uncertain aud obscure. But I fear that ] she never left again 



Mary was unquestionably a party to her hus- 
ba s murder, and that this was the revenge 
she had threatened. The Scotch people uni- 
versally believed it. Voices cried out in the 
streets of Edinburgh, in the dead c* the night, for 



After trying very hard to get rid of the neces- 
sity of clearing herself, Mary, advised by Lord 
Herries, her best friend in England, agreed to 
answer the charges against her, if the Scottish 
noblemen who made them would attend to 



JUS1 i :e on the murderess. Placards were posted maintain them before such English noblemen as 
by unknown hands in the public places de- [ Elizabeth might appoiut for that purpose. A.C 
nouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the cordingly, such an assembly, under the name of 
Queen as his accomplice; and, when he after -| a conference, met, first at York, and afterward 
ward married her (though himself already mar- | at Hampton Court. In its presence Lord Len- 
ried), previously making a show of taking her nox, Darnley's father, openly charged Mary 
prisoner by force, the indignation of the people with the murder of his son; and, whatever 
knew no bounds. The women particularly are I Mary's friends may now say or write in her 
desi 1 as having been quite frantic against ] behalf, there is no doubt that, when her brother 
the Queen, and to have hooted and cried after Murray produced against her a casket contain 
her in the streets with terrific vehemence. j ing certain guilty letters and verses which he 

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This , stated to have passed between her and Bothwell, 
husband and wife had lived together but a she withdrew from the inquiry. Consequently, 
month, when they were separated forever by the j it is to be supposed that she was then consid- 
successes of a band of Scotch nobles who asso ered guilty by those who had the best oppor 
ciated against them for the protection of the : tunities of judging of the truth, and that the 
young Prince, whom Bothwell had vainly en | feeling which afterward arose in her behalf was 



deavored to lay hold of, and whom he would 
certainly have murdered, if the Earl of Mar, in 
whose hands the boy was, had not been firmly 
and honorably faithful to his trust. Before this 
angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he 
died a prisoner, and mad, nine miserable years 
afterward. Mary, beimr found by the associat 
ed lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent 
a prisoner to Lochleven Castle; which, as it 
stood in the midst of a lake, could only be ap 
preached by boat. Here, one Lord Lindsay, 
who was so much of a brute that the nobles 
would have done better if they had chosen a 
mere gentleman for their messenger, mads her 
sign her abdication, and appoiut Murray Regent 
of Scotland. Here, too, Murray saw her in a 
sorrowing aud humbled state. 

She had better have remained in the Castle of 
Lochleven, dull prison as it was, with the rip 
pling of the lake against it, and the moving 
sha lows of the water on the room walls; but 
she eouJd not rest there, and more thau once 
tried to escape. The first time she had nearly 
succ d !. dressed in the clothes of her own 
washerwoman, but, putting up her hand to pre- 
vent one of the boatmen from lifting her veil, 
the men suspected her, seeing how white it was, 
and rowed her back again. A short time after- 
ward, her fascinating manners enlisted in her 



cause i boy in the castle, called the little Doug some of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe to 



jas. who, while the family were at supper, stole 



a very generous, but not a very reasonable one. 

However, the Duke of Norfolk, an honorable 
,but rather weak nobleman, partly because Mary 
was captivating, partly because he was ambi- 
tious, partly because he was over-persuaded by 
artful plotters against Elizabeth, conceived a 
strong idea that he would like to marry the 
Queeu of Scots — though he was a little fright- 
ened, too, by the letters in the casket. This idea 
being secretly encouraged by some of the noble- 
men of Elizabeth's court, aud even by the favor- 
ite Earl of Leicester (because it was objected to 
by other favorites who were his rivals), Mary 
expressed her approval of it, and the King of 
France anil the King of Spain are supposed to 
have 'done the same. It was not so quietly 
planned, though, but that it came to Elizabeth's 
ears, who warned the Duke " to be careful what 
sort of pillow he was going to lay his head 
.upon." lie made a humble reply at the time; 
but turned sulky soon afterward, and. being 
considered dangerous, was sent to the Tower. 

Thus, from the moment of Mary's coming to 
England, she began to be the center of plots and 
miseries. 

A rise of the Catholics in the north was the 
next of these, and it was only checked by many 
executions and much bloodshed. It was f ol- 
owed by a great conspiracy of the JPopc and 



depose Elizabeth, place Mary on the throne, and 



the keys of the great gate", went softly "out with restore the unreformed religion. It is almost 
the Queen, locked the gate on the outside, and ; impossible to doubt that Mary knew aud ap- 
rowed her away across the lake, sinking the j proved of this; and the Pope himself was so 
keys as they went along. On the opposite ' hot in the matter that he issued a bull, in which 



he openly called Elizabeth the " pretended 
Queen " of England, excommunicated her, and 
excommunicated all her subjects who should 
continue to obey her. A copy of this miserable 
paper got into London, aud was found one 
morning publicly posted on the Bishop of Lon- 

: don's gate. A great hue and cry being raised, 
another copy was found in the chamber of a stu- 

; dent of Lincoln's Inn, who confessed, being put 
upon the rack, that he had received it from one 
John Felton, a rich gentleman who lived across 
the Thames, near Southwark. This John Fel- 

, ton, being put upon the rack too, confessed that 
he had posted the placard on the Bishop's gate. 
For this offense he was, within four days, taken 

j to St. Paul's Churchyard, and there hanged and 
quartered. As to the Pope's bull, the people 
by the Reformation having thrown off t he Pope, 
did not care much, you may suppose, for the 
Pope's throwing off them. It was a mere dirty 
piece of paper, and not half so powerful as a 
street ballad. 

On the very day when Felton was brought to 
his trial, the poor Duke of Norfolk was released. 
It would have been well for him if he had kept 
away from the Tower evermore, and from the 
snares that had taken him there. But, even 
while he was in that dismal place, he corre- 
sponded with Mary, and, as soon as he was out 
of it, he began to plot again. Being discovered 

j in correspondence with the Pope, With a view 
to a rising in England which should force Eliz- 
abeth to consent to his marriage with Mary and 
to repeal the laws against the Catholics, he was 
recommitted to the Tower, aud brought to 
trial. He was found guilty by the unanimous 
verdict of the Lords who tried him, and was 
sentenced to the block. 

It is very difficult to make out, at this dis- 
tance of time, and between opposite accounts, 
whether Elizabeth really was a humane woman, 
or desired to appear so, or was fearful of shed- 

1 ding the blood of people of great name who were 
popular in the country. '1 u ice she commanded 
and countermanded the execution of this Duke, 
and it did not take place until five months after 
his trial. The scaffold was erected on Tower 
Hill, and there he died like a brave man. He 
refused to have his eyes bandaged, saying that 
he was not at all afraid of death; and he admit- 
ted the justice of his sentence, and was much 
regretted by the people. 

Although Mary had shrunk at the most im- 

' portant time from disproving her guilt, she was 
very careful never to do anything that would 
admit it. All such proposals as were made to 
her by Elizabeth for her release required that 
admission in some form or other, and therefore 
came to nothing. Moreover both women being 
artful and treacherous, and neither ever trusting 
the other, it was not likely that they could ever 
make an agreement. So, the Parliament, 
gravated by what the Pope had done, made new 
and strong laws against the spreading of the 
Catholic religion in England, and declared it 
treason in any one to say that the Queen and her 
successors were not the lawful sovereigns of 
England. It would have done more thau this, 
but for Elizabeth's moderation. 

Since the Reformation there had come to be 
three great sects of religious people — or people 
who called themselves so— in England; that is 
to say, those who belonged to 'the Reformed 
Church, those who belonged to the Unreformed 
Church, and those who were called the Puritans, 
because they said that they wanted to have 
everything very pure and plain in all the 
Church service. These last were for the most 
part an uncomfortable people, who thought it 
highly meritorious to dress in a hideous man- 
ner, talk' through their noses, and oppose all 
harmless enjoyments. But they were powerful 
too, and very much in earnest, and they were 
one and all the determined enemies of the 
Queen of Scots. The Protestant feeling in Eng- 
land was further strengthened by the tremen- 
dous cruelties to which Protestants were exposed 
in France and in the Netherlands. Scores of thou- 
sands of them were put to death in those coun- 
tries with every cruelty that can be imagined, 
and at last, in the autumn of the year one thou- 
sand five hundred and seventy-two, one of 
the greatest barbarities ever committed in the 
world took place at Paris. 

It is called in history The Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, because it took place on St. Bar- 
tholomew's Eve. The day fell on Saturday, the 
twenty -third of August. On that day all the 
great leaders of the Protestants (who were there 
called Huguenots) were assembled together, for 
the purpose, as was represented to them, of do- 
ing honor to the marriage of their chief, the 



52 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



young King of Navarre, with the sister of 
Charles the Ninth : a miserable young King who 
then occupied the French throne. This dull 
creature was made to believe by his mother and 
other fierce Catholics about him that the Hugue- 
nots meant to take bis life; and he tvas persuad- 
ed to give secret orders that, on the tolling of 
a great bell, they should be fallen upon by an 
overpowering force of armed men, and slaugh- 
tered wherever they could be found. When the 
appointed hour was close at hand, the stupid 
wretch, trembling from head to foot, was taken 
into a balcony by his mother to see the atrocious 
work begun. The moment the bell tolled, the 
murderers broke forth. During all that night 
and the two next days they broke into the 
houses, fired the houses, shot and stabbed the 
Protestants, men, women, and children, and 
flung their bodies into the streets. They were 
shot at in the streets as they passed along, and 
their blood ran down the gutters. Upward of 
ten thousand Protestants were killed in Paris 
alone; in all France four or five times that num- 
ber. To return thanks to Heaven for these dia- j 
bolical murders, the Pope and his train actually 
went in public procession at Rome, and, as if 
this were not shame enough for them, they had 
a medal struck to commemorate the event. But, 
however comfortable the wholesale murders 
were to these high authorities, they had not that 
soothing effect upon the doll-King. 1 am happy 
to state that he never knew a moment's peace 
afterward; that he was continually crying out 
that he saw the. Huguenots, covered with blood 
and wounds, falling dead before him; and that 
he died within a year, shrieking and yelling and 
raving to that degree, that if all the Popes who 
had ever lived had been rolled into one, they 
would not have afforded his guilty Majesty the 
slightest conscitotion. 

When the terrible news of the massacre ar- 
rived in Engiand, it made a powerful impression 
indeed upon the people. If they began to run a 
little wild against the Catholics at about this 
time, this fearful reason for it, coming so soon 
after the days of bloody Queen Mary, must be 
remembered in their excuse. The court was not 
quite so honest as the people— but perhaps it 
Bometimes is not. It received the French em- 
bassador, with all the lords and ladies dressed 
in deep mourning, and keeping a profound si- 
lence. Nevertheless, a proposal of marriage 
which he had made to Elizabeth only two days 
before the eve of St. Bartholomew, on behalf of 
the Duke of Alencon, the French King's broth- 
er, a boy of seventeen, still went on; while, on 
the other hand, in her usual crafty way, the 
Queen secretly supplied the Huguenots with 
money and weapons. 

I must say that for a Queen who made all 
those fine speeches, of which I have confessed 
myself to be rather tired, about living and dy- 
ing a Maiden Queen, Elizabeth was " going" to 
be married pretty often. Besides always having 
some English favorite or other whom she by 
turns encouraged, and swore at, and knocked 
about— for the Maiden Queen was very free 
with her fists— she held this French Duke off 
and on through several years. When he at last 
came over to England, the marriage articles 
were actually drawn up, and it was settled that 
the wedding should take place in six weeks. 
The Queen was then so bent upon it. that she 
prosecuted a poor Puritan named Stubbs, and a 
poor bookseller named Page, for writing and 
publishing a pamphlet against it. Their right 
hands were chopped off for this crime; and 
poor Stubbs — more loyal than I should have 
teen myself under the circumstances — immedi- 
ately pulled off his hat with his left hand, and 
cried "God save the Queen!" Stubbs was 
cruelly treated; for the marriage never took 
place after all, though the Queen pledged her- 
self to the Duke with a ring from her own 
finger. He went away, no better than he came, 
when the courtship had lasted some ten years 
altogether; and he died a couple of years after- 
ward, mourned by Elizabeth, who appears to 
have been really fond of him. It is not much 
to her credit, for he was a bad enough member 
of a bad family. 

To return to the Catholics. There arose two 
orders of priests, who were very busy in Eng- 
land, arid who were much dreaded. These 
were the Jesuits (who were everywhere in all 
sorts of disguises), and the Seminary Priests 
The people had a great horror of the first, be- 
cause they were known to have taught that 
murder was lawful if it were done with an ob- 
ject of which they approved; and they had a 
great horror of the second, because they came to 
teach the old religion, and to be the successors 



of " Queen Mary's priests," as those yet linger- 
ing in England were called, when they should die 
out. The severest laws were made against them, 
and were 'most unmercifully executed. Those 
who sheltered them in their houses often suffered 
heavily for what was an act o f humanity ; and the 
rack, that cruel torture which tore men's limbs 
asunder, was constantly kept going. What 
these unhappy men confessed, or what was ever 
confessed by anyone under that agony, must al- 
ways be received with great doubt, as it is cer- 
tain that people have frequently owned to the 
most absurd and impossible crimes to escape 
such dreadful suffering. But I cannot doubt it 
to have been proved by papers that there were 
many plots, both among the Jesuits, and with 
France, and with Scotland, and with Spain, for 
the destruction of Queen Elizabeth, for the plac- 
ing of Mary on the throne, and for (he revival 
of the old religion. 

If the English people were too ready to be- 
lieve in plots, there were, as 1 have said, good 
reasons for it. When the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew was yet fresh in their recollection, a 
great Protestant Dutch hero, the Prince of Or- 
ange, was shot by an assassin, who confessed 
that he had been kepi; and trained for the pur- 
pose in a college of Jesuits. The Dutch, in this 
surprise and distress, offered to make Elizabeth 
their sovereign, but she declined the honor, and 
sent them a small army instead, under the com- 
mand of the Earl of Leicester, who, although a 
capital court favorite, was not much of a gen- 
eral. He did so little in Holland, that his cam- 
paign there would probably have been forgot- 
ten, but for its occasioning the death of one of 
the best writers, the best knights, and the best 
gentlemen of that or any age. This was Sir 
Philip Sidney, who was wounded by a musket 
ball in the thigh as he mounted a fresh horse, 
after having had his own killed under him. He 
had to ride back wounded, a long distance, and 
was very faint with fatigue and loss of blood, 
when some water, for which he had eagerly 
asked, was handed to him. But he was so good 
and gentle even then, that, seeing a poor badly 
wounded common soldier lying on the ground, 
looking at the water with longing eyes, he said, 
" Thy necessity is greater than mine," and gave 
it up to him. This touching action of a noble 
heart is perhaps as well known as any incident 
in history — is as famous far and wide as the 
blood-stained Tower of London, with its ax, 
and block, and murders out of number. So de- 
lightful is an act of true humanity, and so glad 
are mankind to remember it. 

At home, intelligence of plots began to thick- 
en every day. I suppose the people never did 
live under such continual terrors as those by 
which they were possessed now, of Catholic 
risings, and burnings, and poisonings, and I 
don't know what. Still we must always remem- 
ber that they lived near and close to awful reali- 
ties of that kind, and that, with their experi- 
ence, it was not difficult to believe in any enormi- 
ty. The Government had the same fear, and 
did not take the best means of discovering the 
truth — for, besides torturing the suspected, it 
employed paid spies, who will always lie for 
their own profit. It even made some of the 
conspiracies it brought to light, by sending false 
letters to disaffected people, inviting them to 
join in pretended plots, which they too readily 
did. 

But, one great real plot was at length discov- 
ered, and it ended the career of M ary, Queen of 
Scots. A seminary priest named Ballard, and a 
Spanish soldier named Savage, set on and en- 
couraged by certain French priests, imparted a 
design to one Antony Babington — a gentleman 
of fortune in Derbyshire, who bad been for 
some time a secret agent of Mary's — for murder- 
ing the Queen. Babington then confided the 
scheme to some other Catholic gentlemen who 
were his friends, and they joined it heartily. 
They were vain, weak-headed young men, ridic- 
ulously confident, and preposterously proud of 
their plan; for they got a gimcrack painting- 
made of the six choice spirits who were to mur- 
der Elizabeth, with Babington in an attitude 
for the center figure. Two of their number, 
however, one of whom was a priest, kept Eliza- 
beth's wisest minister, Sir Francis Walsingham, 
acquainted with the whole project from the 
first. The conspirators were completely de- 
ceived to the final point, when Babington gave 
Savage, because he was shabby, a ring from his 
finger, and some money from his purse, where- 
with to buy himself new clothes in which to 
kill the Queen. Walsingham, having then full 
evidence against the whole b<i"d, and two letters 
of Mary 's besides, resolved to seize them. Sus- 



pecting something wrong, they stole out of the 
city one by one, and hid themselves in St. 
John's Wood, and other places which really 
were hiding-places then; but they were all tak- 
en, and all executed. When they were seized, 
a gentleman was sent from court to inform 
Mary of the fact, and of her being involved in 
the discovery. Her frieuds have complained 
that she was kept in very hard and severe cus- 
tody. It does not appear very likely, forshe was 
going out a hunting that very morning. 

Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago, 
by one in France who had good information'of 
what was secretly doing, that, in holding Mary 
alive, she held "the wolf who would devour 
; her." The*Bishop of London had, more lately, 
given the Queen's favorite minister the advice 
j in writing, " forthwith to cut off the Scottish 
i Queen's head. " The question now was, what. 
I to do with her? The Earl of Leicester wrote a 
I little note home from Holland recommending 
that she should be quietly poisoned; that noble 
favorite having accustomed his mind, it is pos- 
sible, to remedies of that nature. His black ad- 
| vice, however, was disregarded, and she was 
brought to trial atFotheringay Castle, in North- 
amptonshire, before a tribunal of forty, com- 
posed of both religions. There, and in the Star 
Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fort- 
night. She d- tended herself with great ability, 
but could only deny the confessions that had 
been made by Babington and others ; could only 
call her own letters, produced against her by her 
(own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could 
j only deny everything. She was found guilty, 
and declared to have incurred the penalty of 
death. The Parliament met, approved the sen- 
tence, and prayed the Queen to have it executed, 
i The Queen replied that she requested them to 
I consider whether no means could be found of 
saving Mary's life without endangering her 
own. The Parliament rejoined, Mo; and the 
citizens illuminated their houses and lighted 
bonfires, in token of their joy that all these plots 
and troubles were to be ended by the death of 
the Queen of Scots. 

She, feeling sure that her time was now come, 
wrote a letter to the Queen of England, mak- 
ing three entreaties; first, that she might be 
buried in France; secondly, that she might not 
be executed in secret, but before her servants 
and some others; thirdly, that after her death 
her servants should not be molested, but should 
be suffered to go home with the legacies she left 
them. It was an affecting letter, and Eliza- 
beth shed tears over it, but sent no answer. 
Then came a special embassador from France, 
and another from Scotland, to intercede for 
Mary's life; and then the nation began to 
clamor more and more for her death. 

What the real feelings or intentions of Eliza- 
beth were can never be known now; but I 
strongly suspect her of only wishing one thing 
more than Mary's death, and that was to keep 
free of tbe blame of it. On the first of Febru- 
ary, one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven, 
Lord Burleigh having drawn out the warrant 
for the execution, the Queen sent to the secre- 
tary Davison to bring it to her, that she might 
sign it: which she did. "Next day, when Davi- 
son told her it was sealed, she angrily asked 
him why such haste was necessary? --Next day 
but one, she joked about it, and swore a little. 
Again, next day but one, she seemed to com- 
plain that it was not yet done, but still she 
would not he plain with those about her. So, 
on the seventh, the Earls of Kent and Shrews- 
bury, with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire, 
came with the warrant to Fotheringay, to tell 
the Queen of Scots to prepare for death. 

When those messengers of ill omen were 

gone, Mary made a frugal supper, drank to her 

servants, read over her will, went to bed, slept 

for some hours, and then arose and passed the 

| remainder of the night saying prayers. In the 

morning she dressed herself in her be^ clothes; 

! and, at eight o clock, when the sheriff came for 

her to her chapel, took leavg of her servants, 

| who were there assembled praying with her, 

] and went down stairs, carrying a Bible in one 

i hand and a crucifix in the other. Two of har 

women and four of her men were allowed to be 

present in the hall ; where a low scaffold, only two 

feet from the ground, was erected and covered 

with black; and where the executioner from 

1 the Tower, and his assistant, stood, dressed in 

black velvet. The hall was full of people. 

I While the sentence was being read she sat 

upon a stool ; and, when it was finished, she 

again denied her guilt, as she had done before. 

i The Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peterborough. 

in their Protestant zeal, made some very un- 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



53 



necessary speeches to her; to which she replied 
that she died in the Catholic religion, and they , 
need not trouble themselves about that matter. ; 
When hiT head and neck were uncovered by 
the executioners, she said that she had not been 
used to be undressed by such hands, or before 
so much company. Finally, one of her women 
fastened a cloth over her face, and she laid her 
neck upon the block, and repeated more than 
once in Latin, " Into thy hands, O Lord, 1 com- 
mend my spirit!" Some say her head was 
struck off in two blows, some say in three. 
I [owever that be. when it was held up, stream- 
ing with blood, the real hair beneath the false 
hair she had long worn was seen to be as gray 
as that of a woman of seventy, though she was 
at that time only in her forty-sixth year. All 
her beauty was gone. 

But sue was beautiful enough to her little 
ilo"- who cowered under her dress, frightened, 
when she went upon the scaffold, and who lay 
down beside her headless body when all her 
earthly sorrows were over. 

Third Part. 

On its being formally made known to Eliza- 
beth that the sentence had been executed on the 
Queen of Scots, she showed the utmost grief 
and rage, drove her favorites from her with 
violent°indiguation, and sent Davison to the 
Tower; from which place he was only released 
in the end by paying an immense fine, which 
completely ruined him. Elizabeth not only 
over-acted her part in making these pretenses, 
but most 'basely reduced to poverty one of her 
faithful servants for no other fault than obey- 
ing her commands. 

James, King of Scotland, Mary's son, made a 
show likewise of being very angry on the oc- 
casion; but he was a pensioner of England to 
the amount of five thousand pounds a year, and 
he had known very little of his mother, and he 
possibly regarded her as the murderer of his 
father, and he soon took it quietly. 

Philip, King of Spait,, however, threatened 
to do greater" things than ever had been done 
yet to set up the Catholic religion and pun- 
ish Protestant England. Elizabeth, hearing 
that he and the Prince of Parma were mak- 
ing ureal preparations for this purpose, in 
order to be beforehand with them, sent out 
Admiral Drake (a famous navigator, who had 
sailed about theworld, and had already brought 
meat plunder from Spain) to the port of Cadiz, 
where he burnt a hundred vessels full of stores. 
This great loss obliged the Spaniards to put off 
Hie invasion tor a year; but it was none the less 
formidable for that, amounting to one huudred 
and thirty ships, nineteen thousand soldiers, 
eight thousand sailors, two thousand slaves, 
andbetween two and three thousand great guns. 
England was not idle in making ready to resist 
this great force. All the men between sixteen 
years old and sixty were trained and drilled ; the 
national fleet of ships (in number only thirty- 
four at first) was enlarged by public contribu- 
tions, and by private ships fitted out by noble- 
men; the city of London, of its own accord, 
furnished double the number of ships and men 
that it was required to provide; and, if ever the 
national spirit was up in England, it was up 
all through the country to resist the Spaniards. 
Some of the Queen's advisers were for seizing 
the principal English Catholics, and putting 
them to death; but the Queen — who, to her 
honor, used to say that she would never believe 
any ill of her subjects, which a parent would 
not believe of her own children — rejected the 
advice, and only confined a few of those who 
were the most suspected in the fens of Lincoln- 
shire. The great body of Catholics deserved 
this confidence; for they behaved most loyally, 
nobly, and bravely. 

So, with all England firing up like one strong 
angry man, and with both sides of the Thames 
fortified, and with the soldiers under arms, and 
with the sailors in their ships, the country 
waited for the coming of the proud Spanish 
fleet, which was called The Invincible Armada. 
The Queen herself, riding in armor on a white 
horse, and the Earl of Essex aud the Earl of 
Leicester holding her bridle-rein, made a brave 
speech to the troops at Tilbury Fort, opposite 
Gravesend, which was received with such en- 
thusiasm as is seldom known. Then came the 
Spanish Armada into the English Channel, 
sailing along in the form of a half-moon, of such 
great size that it was seven miles broad. But 
the English were quickly upon it, and woe 
then to all the Spanish ships that dropped a 
little out of the half -moon, for the English took 



them instantly! And it soon appeared that the 
great Armada was anything but invincible, for, 
on a summer night, bold Drake sent eight blaz i 
ing fire-ships right into the midst of it. In ter- j 
rible consternation, the Spaniards tried to get j 
out to sea, aud so became dispersed; the English | 
pursued them at a great advantage; a storm came I 
on, and drove the Spaniards among rocks 
and shoals: and the swift end of the Invincible 
fleet was, that it lost thirty great ships and ten | 
thousand men, and, defeated and disgraced, 
sailed home again. Being afraid to go by the 
English Channel, it sailed all round Scotland 
aud Ireland: some of the ships getting cast 
away on the latter coast in bad weather, the 
Irish, who were a kind of savages, plundered 
those vessels and killed their crews. So ended 
this great attempt to invade and conquer Eng- 
land. And I think it will be a long time before 
any other invincible fleet, coming to England 
with the same object, will fare much better 
than the Spanish Armada. 

Though the Spanish King had had this bitter 
taste of English bravery, he was so little the wiser 
for it as still to entertain his old designs, and 
even to conceive the absurd idea of placing his 
daughter on the English throne. But the Earl 
of Essex, Sir Walter Kaleigh, Sir Thomas 
Howard, and some other distinguished leaders, 
put to sea from Plymouth, entered the port of 
Cadiz once more, obtained a complete victory 
over the shipping assembled there, and got pos 
session of the town. In obedience to the 
Queen's express instructions, they behaved with 
great humanity ; and the principal loss of the 
Spaniards was a vast sum of money which 
they had to pay for ransom. This was one 
of many gallant achievements on the sea 
effected in this reign. Sir Walter KfiWgh 
himself, after marrying a maid of honor and 
giving offense to the Maiden Queen thereby, had 
already sailed to South America in search of 
gold. 

The Earl of Leicester was now dead, and so 
was Sir Thomas Walsingham, who Lord Burleigh 
was soon to follow. The principal favorite was 
the Earl of Essex, a spirited and handsome 
man, a favorite with 1he people too, as well as 
with the Queen, and possessed of many ad- 
mirable qualities. It was much debated at 
court whether there should be peace with 
Spain or no, and he was very urgent for war. 
He also tried hard to have his own way in the 
appointment of a deputy to govern in Ireland. 
One day, while this question was in dispute, he 
hastily "took offense, aud turned his back upon 
the Queen; as a gentle reminder of which im- 
propriety, the Queen gave him a tremendous box 
on the ear, and told him to go to the devil. He 
went home instead, and did not reappear at 
court for half a year or so, when he aud the 
Queen were reconciled, though never (as some 
suppose) thoroughly. 

From this time the fate of the Earl of Essex 
and that of the Queen seemed to be blended 
together. The Irish wore still perpetually quar 
reling and fighting among themselves, and he 
went over to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, to the 
great joy of his enemies (Sir Walter Raleigh 
among the rest), who were glad to have so 
dangerous a rival far off. Not being by any 
means successful there, and knowing that his 
enemies would take advantage of that circum- 
stance to injure him with the Queen, he came 
home again, though against her orders. The 
Queen being taken » by surprise when he ap- 
peared before her, gave him her hand to kiss, 
and he was overjoyed — though it "was not a 
very lovely hand by "this time — but in the course 
of the same day she ordered- him to confine 
himself to his room, and two or three days 
afterward had him taken into custody. _ With 
the same sort of caprice — and as capricious an 
old woman she now was as ever wore a crown 
or a head either — she sent him broth from her 
own table on his falling ill from anxiety, and 
cried about him. 

He was a man who could find comfort and 
occupation in his books, and he did so for a 
time; not the least happy time, I dare say, of 
his life. But it happened, unfortunately for 
: him, that he held a monoplv in sweet wines: 
which means that nobody could sell them with- 
out purchasing his permission. This right, 
which was only for a term, expiring, he ap- 
plied to have it renewed. The Queen refused, 
with the rather strong observation — but she 
did make strong observations — that an unruly 
beast must be stinted in his food. Upon this, 
the angry Earl, who had been already deprived 
of many offices, thought himself in danger of 
complete ruin, and turned against the Queen, 



whom he called a vain old woman who had 
grown as crooked in her mind as she had in 
her figure. These uncomplimentary expres- 
sions the ladies of the court immediately snap- 
ped up and carried to the Queen, whom they 
did not put in abetter temper, you may believe. 
The same court ladies, when they had beautiful 
dark hair of their own, used to wear false red 
hair, to be like the Queen. So they were not 
very high-spirited ladies, however high in 
rank. 

The worst object of the Earl of Essex, and 
some friends of his who used to meet at Lord 
Southampton's house,was to obtain possession of 
the Queen, aud oblige her by force to dismiss 
her ministers and change her favorites. On 
Saturday, the seventh of February, one thou- 
sand six hundred and one, the Council, suspect- 
ing this, summoned the Earl to come before 
them. He, pretending to be ill, declined; it 
was then settled among his friends that as the 
next day would be Sunday, when many of the 
citizens usually assembled at the Cross by St. 
Paul's Cathedral, he should make one bold 
effort to induce them to rise and follow him to 
the Palace. 

So, on the Sunday morning, he and a small 
body of adherents started out of his house — 
Essex House by the Strand, with steps to the 
river — having first shut up in it, as prisoners, 
some members of the Council who came to 
examine him — and hurried into the City with 
the Earl at their head, crying out, "For the 
Queen! For the Queen! A plot is laid for 
my life!" No one heeded them, however, 
and, when they came to St. Paul's there were 
no citizens there. In the meantime the prisoners 
at Essex House had been released by one of the 
Earl's own friends; he had been promptly pro- 
claimed a traitor in the City itself; and the 
streets were barricaded with carts, and guarded 
by soldiers. The Earl got back to his house 
by water with difficulty, and, after an attempt 
to defend his house against the troops and can- 
non by which it was soon surrounded, gave 
himself up that night. He was brought to trial 
on the nineteenth, and found guilty; on the 
twenty -fifth he was executed on Tower Hill, 
where he died, at thirty-four years old, both 
courageously and penitently. His step-father 
suffered with him. His enemy, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, stood near the scaffold all the time — 
but not so near it as we shall see: him stand 
before we finish his history. 

In this case, as in the cases of the Duke of 
Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots, the Queen 
had commanded, and countermanded, and 
again commanded the execution. It is probable 
that the death of her young and gallant favorite, 
in the prime of 'his good qualities, was never 
off her mind afterward, but she held out, the 
same vain, obstinate, and capricious woman, for 
' another year. Then she danced before her 
court on a state occasion— and cut, I should 
| think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in 
' an immense ruff, stomacher, and wig, at 
seventy years old. For another year still, she 
held out, but without any more dancing, and 
as a moody sorrowful, broken creature. At 
last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six 
hundred and three, having been ill of a very 
j bad cold, and made worse by the death of 
the Countess of Nottingham, who was her inti- 
mate friend, she fell into a stupor, and was sup- 
posed to be dead. She recovered her conscious- 
ness, however, and then nothing would induce 
her to go to bed; for she said that she knew 
that if she did, she should never get up again. 
I There she lay for ten days, on cushions on the 
j floor, without any food, until the Lord Admiral 
got her into bed at last, partly by persuasions, 
and partly by main force. When they asked 
her who should succeed her, she replied that 
her seat had been the seat of Kings, and that 
she would have for her successor " no rascal's 
son, but a King's." Upon this, the lords present 
stared at one another, and took the liberty of 
asking whom she meant ; to which she replied, 
' ' Whom should 1 mean but our cousin of 
Scotland?" This was on the twenty-third of 
March. They asked her once again that day, 
j after she was" speechless, whether she was still 
in the same mind? She struggled up in bed, 
I and joined her hanuT"over her head in the 
I form of a crown, as the only reply she could 
make, it three o'clock next morning she 
| very quietly died, in the forty-fifth year of her 
reign. 

That reign had been a glorious one, and is 
made forever memorable by the distinguished 
men who flourished in it. Apart from the 



54 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



great voyagers, statesmen, and scholars whom it ' entered into by some others, -with the old object 
produced, the names of Bacon, Spenser, and | of seizing the King and keeping him in ini- 
Shakespeare will always be remembered with prisonment until he should change his ministers, 
pride and veneration by the civilized world, and J There were Catholic priests in the plot, and 
•will always impart (though with no great rea- I there were Puritan noblemen too; for, although 
son, perhaps) some portion of their luster to i the Catholics and Puritans were strongly op- 
the'name of Elizabeth herself. It was a great j posed to each other, they united at this time 

against his Sowship, because they knew that he 
had a design against both, after pretending lo 
be friendly to each; this design being to have 
only one high and convenient form of the Protest- 
free. The Queen was very popular, and in : ant religion, which everybody should be bound 
her progresses, or journeys, about her domin- ! to belong to, whether they liked it or not. This 
ions, was everywhere received with the live- I plot was mixed up with another, which may oi- 
liest joy. I think the truth is that she was not | may not have had some reference to placing on 
half so good as she has been made out, and not j the throne, at some time, the Lady Arabella 

" Stuart; whose misfortune it was to be the daugh- 
ter of the younger brother of his Sowship's fa- 



reign for discovery, for commerce, and for 
English enterprise and spirit in general. It 
was a great reign for the Protestaut religion, 
and for the Reformation which made England 



half so bad as she has been made out. She 
had her fine qualities, but she was coarse, 
capricious, and treacherous, and had all the 
faults of an excessively vain young woman 
long after she was an old one. On the whole, 
she had a great deal too much of her father in 
her to please me. 



ther, but who was quite innocent of any part in 
the scheme. Sir Walter Raleigh was accused 
on the confession of Lord Cobham — a miserable 
creature, who said one thing at one time, and an- 
other thing at another time, and could be relied 



Many improvements and luxuries were intro- \ upon in nothing. The trial of Sir Walter 



duced in the course of these five-and-f orty years 
in the general manner of living; but cock-fight 



Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning until 
nearly midnight; he defended himself with such 



ing, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting were still the eloquence, genius, and spirit against all accusa- 
national amusements; and a coach was so rare- j tions, and against the insults of Coke, the At- 
ly seen, and was such an ugly and cumbersome I torney-General — who, according to the custom 
affair wLen it was seen, that even the Queen i of the time, foully abused him — that those who 
herself, on many high occasions, rode on horse- [ went there detesting the prisoner came away ad- 



back on a pillion behind the Lord Chancellor. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



ENGLAND UNDER JAJIES THE FIRST. 

" Our cousin of Scotland " was ugly, awk 
ward, and shuffling both in mind and person 
His tongue was much too large for his mouth 

his legs were much too weak for his body, and j block; but, blundering and bungling as usual 
his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an he had very nearly overreached himself. For, 



miring him, and declaring that anything so won 
derful and so captivating was never heard. He 
was found guilty, nevertheless, and seutenced to 
death. Execution was deferred, and he was 
taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, 
less fortunate, were executed with the usual 
atrocity; and Lord Cobham and two others were 
pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thought 
it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the 
people by pardoning these three at the very 



idiot's. He was cunning, covetous, wasteful, 
idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great 
swearer, and the most conceited man on earth. 



the messenger on horseback who brought the 
pardon came so late, that he was pushed to the 
outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout 



His figure— what is commonly called rickety ! and roar out what he came for. The miserable 
from his birth— presented a most ridiculous ap- j Cobham did not gain much by being spared 
pearance, dressed in thick padded clothes, as a | that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and a 
safeguard against being stabbed (of which he i beggar, utterly despised, and miserably poor, for 
lived in continual fear)" of a grass-green color thirteen years, and then died in an old out-house 



from head to foot, with a hunting-horn dan- 
gling at his side instead of a sword, and his hat 
and feather sticking over one eye, or hanging 
on the back of his head, as he happened to toss 
it on. He used to loll on the necks of his favor 



belonging to one of his former servants. 
This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh 

safely shut up in the Tower, his Sowship held a 
' great dispute with thePuritans ontheir presenting 
| a petition to him, and had it all his own way — not 



ite courtiers, and slobber their faces, and kiss . so very wonderful, as he would talk continually, 
and pinch their cheeks; and the greatest favorite and wou:d not hear anybody else— and filled 
he ever had used to sign himself, in his letters j the Bishops with admiration. It was comfort- 
to his Royal master, his Majesty's " dog and ably settled that there was to be only one form 
slave," and used to address his Majesty as "Ms of religion, and that all men were to think ex- 
Sowship." His Majesty was the worst rider ever j actly alike. But, although this was arranged 
seen, and thought himself the best. He was one ' two centuries and a half ago, and although the 
of the most impertinent talkers (in the broadest ! arrangement was supported by much fining and 



Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being unan 
swerable in all manner of argument. He wrote 
some of the most wearisome treatises ever read 
— among others, a book upon witchcraft, in 
which he was a devout believer — and thought 
himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, 
and wrote, and said that a king had a right to 
make and unmake what laws he pleased, and 
ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. 
This is the plain true character of the personage 
whom the greatest men about the court praised 
and flattered to that degree, that I doubt if there 
be anything much more shameful in the annals 
of human nature. 

He came to the English throne with great 
ease. The miseries of a disputed succession had 
been felt so long, and so dreadfully, that he 
was proclaimed within a few hours of Eliza 
beth's death, and was accepted by the nation, 
even without being asked to give any pledge 
that he would govern well, or that he would re- 
dress crying grievances. He took a month to 
come from Edinburgh to London; and, by way 
of exercising his new power, hanged a pick- 
pocket on the journey without any trial, and 
knighted everybody he could lay hold of. He 
made two hundred knights before he got to his^ 
palace in London, and seven hundred before he 
had been in it three months. He also shoveled 
sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords — 
and there was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotch- 
men among them, you may believe. 

His Sowship's Prime Minister, Cecil (for 1 
cannot do better than call his Majesty what his 
favorite called him), was the enemy of Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter's political 



imprisonment, 1 do not find that it is quite suc- 
cessful even yet. 

His Sowship, having that uncommonly high 
opinion of himself as a King, had a very low 
opinion of Parliament as a power that auda- 
ciously wanted to control him. When he called 
his first Parliament after he had been King a 
year, he accordingly thought he would take 
pretty high ground with them, and told then 
that he commanded them "as an absolute 
King." The Parliament thought those strong 
w T ords, and saw the necessity of upholding their 
authority. His Sowship had three children: 
Prince Henry, Prince Charles, and the Princess 
Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of 
these, and we shall too soon see which, if he had 
learnt a little wisdom concerning Parliaments 
from his father's obstinacy. 

Now, the people still laboring under their old 
dread of the Catholic religion, this Parliament 
revived and strengthened the severe laws 
against it. And this so angered Robert Catesby, 
a restless Catholic gentleman of an old family, 
that he formed one of the most desperate and 
tenrible designs ever conceived in the mind of 
man; no less a scheme than the Gunpowder 
Plot. 

His object was, when the King, Lords, and 
Commons should be assembled at the next open- 
ing of Parliament, to blow them up, one and all, 
with a great mine of gunpowder. The first 
person to whom he confided this horrible idea 
was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershire gentle- 
man who had served in the army abroad, and 
had been secretly employed in Catholic projects. 
While Winter was yet undecided, and when he 



friend, Lord Cobham; and his Sowship's first had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from 
trouble was a plot originated by these two, and the Spanish Embassador there whether there was 



any hope of Catholics being relieved through the 
intercession of the King of Spain will his Sow- 
ship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, daring 
man, whom he had known when they were both, 
soldiers abroad, and whose name was Guido — 
or Guy— Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he 
proposed it to this man, knowing him to be the 
man for any desperate deed, and" they two came 
back to England together. Here they admitted 
two other conspirators: Thomas Percy, related 
to the Earl of Northumberland, and Johu 
Wright, his brother-in-law. All these met to- 
gether in a solitary house in the open fields which 
were then near Clement's Inn, now a closely 
blocked-up part of London; and, when they had 
all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesbj" told 
the rest what his plan was. They then went 
up stairs into a garret, and received the Sacra- 
ment from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who is said 
not to have known actually of the Gunpowder 
Plot, but who, I think, must have had his sus- 
picions that there was something desperate afoot. 

Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and, as he 
had occasional duties to perform about the court, 
then kept at Whitehall, there would be nothing; 
suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, 
having looked well about him, and having found, 
a house to let, the back of which joined the Par- 
liament House, he hired it of a person named 
Ferris, for the purpose of undermining the wall. 
Having got possession of this house, the conspir- 
ators hired another on the Lambeth side of the 
Thames, which they used as a storehouse for 
wood, gunpowder, and other combustible mat- 
ters. These were to be removed at night (and 
afterward were removed) bit by bit, to the house 
at Westminster; and, that there might be some 
trusty person to keep watch over the Lambeth 
stores, they admitted another conspirator, by 
name Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentle- 
man. 

All these arrangements had been made some 
months, and it was a dark wintry December 
night, when the conspirators, who had been in. 
the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, 
met in tbe house at Westminster, and began to 
dig. They had laid in a good stock of eatables, 
to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug 
with great ardor. But, the wall being tremen- 
dously thick, and the work very severe, they 
took into their plot Christopher Wright, a. 
younger brother of John Wright, that they 
might have a new pair of hands to help. And 
Christopher Wright fell to like a freshman, and 
they dug and dug by night- and by day. and 
Fawkes stood sentinel all the time. And. if any 
man's heart seemed to fail him at all, Fawkes 
said, " Gentlemen, we have abundance of pow- 
der and shot, here, and there is no fear of our 
being taken alive, even if discovered." The 
same Fawkes who, in the capacity of sentinel, 
was always prowling about;, soon picked up the 
intelligence that the King had prorogued the 
Parliament again, from the seventh of February, 
the day first fixed upon, until the third of Octo- 
ber. When the conspirators knew this, they 
agreed to separate until after the Christmas holi- 
days, and to take no notice of each other in the 
meanwhile, and never to write letters to one an- 
other on any account. So, the house in West- 
minster was shut up again, and I suppose the 
neighbors thought that those strange-looking 
men who lived there so gloomily, and went out 
so seldom, were gone away to have a merry 
Christmas somewhere, 

It was the beginning of February, sixteen 
hundred and five, when Catesby met his fellow 
conspirators again at this Westminster house. 
He had now admitted three more: John Grant, 
a Warwickshire gentleman of a melancholy 
temper, who lived in a doleful house near Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall ail round 
it, and a deep moat; Robert Winter, eldest 
brother of Thomas; and Catesby's own servant, 
Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had some 
suspicion of what his master was about. These 
three had all suffered more or. less for their re- 
ligion in Elizabeth's time. And now they all 
began to dig again, and they dug and dug by 
night and by day. 

They found it dismal work alone there, under- 
ground, with such a fearful secret on their 
minds, and so many murders before them. They 
were filled with w^ild fancies. Sometimes they 
thought they heard a great bell tolling, deep 
down jn the earth under the Parliament House; 
sometimes they thought they heard low voices 
muttering about the Gunpowder Plot; once, in 
the morning, they really did hear a great rum- 
bling noise over their heads, as they dug and 
sweated in their mine. Every man stopped and 
looked aghast at his neighbor, wondering what 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



55 



had happened, when that bold prowler, Fawkes 
who had been out to look, came in and told 
them that it was only a dealer in coals, who had 
occupied a cellar under the Parliament House, 
removing his stock-in-trade to some other place. 
Upon this, the conspirators, who with all their 
din-n-ino- and digging had not yet dug through 
the tremendously thick wall, changed their plan ; 
hired that cellar, which was directly under the 
House of Lords : put sis-and-thirty barrels of 
o-uupowder in it, and covered them over with 
feo-ots and coals. Then they all dispersed agam 
till September, when the following new couspir- ! 
ators were admitted: Sir Edward Baynham, of I 
Gloucestershire; Sir Everard Digby, ot Rutland- 
shire Ambrose Rookwood, of Suffolk; Francis 
Tresham, of Northamptonshire. Most of these 
were rich, and were to assist the plot, some with 
money and some with horses, on which the 
conspirators were to ride through the country, 
and rouse the Catholics after the Parliament 
should lie blown into the air. 

Parliament being again prorogued from the 
third of October to the fifth of November, and 
Die conspirators being uneasy lest their design 
should have been found out, Thomas Winter said 
he would go up into the House of Lords on the 
day of the prorogation, and see how matters 
looked. Nothing could be better. The un- 
conscious Commissioners were walking about 
and talking to one another, just over the six- 
aud-thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came 
back and told the rest so, and they went on with 
their preparations. Thev hired a ship, and kept 
it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes was 
to sail for Flanders after firing with a slow 
match the train that was to explode the powder. 
A number of Catholic gentlemen not in the secret 
were invited, on pretense of a hunting party, to 
meet Sir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the 
fatal day, that they might be ready to act to- 
gether. And now all was ready. 

But now, the great wickedness aud danger ; 
which had been all along at the bottom of this 
wicked plot began to show itself. As the fifth 
of November drew near, most of the conspira- 
tors, remembering that they had friends and re- 
lations who would be in the House of Lords 
thai day felt some natural relenting, and a wish 
to warn them to keep away. They were not 
much comforted by Catesby's declaring that in 
such a cause he would blow up his own son. 
Lord Mounteagle, Tresham's brother inlaw, 
was certain to be in the House; and, when 
Tresham found that he could not prevail upon 
the rest to devise any means of sparing their 
friends, he wrote a mysterious letter to this lord, 
and left it at his lodging in the dusk, urging 
him to keep away from the opening of Parlia- 
ment, "since God and man had concurred to 
punish the wickedness of the times." It con- 
tained the words ' ' that the Parliament should re- 
ceive a terrible blow, and yet should not see 
•who hurt them." And it added, " the danger is 
past as soon as you have burnt the letter." 

The ministers and courtiers made out that his 
Snwship, by a direct miracle from Heaven, 
found out what this letter meant. The truth is, 
that they were not long (as few men would be) 
in finding out for themselvses ; and it was decided 
to let the conspirators alone until the very day 
before the opening of Parliament. That the 
conspirators had their fears is certain; for, Tres- 
ham himself said before them all, that they were 
every one dead men ; and, although even he did 
not take flight, there is reason to suppose that, 
he h»d warned other persons besides Lord 
Mounteagle. However, they were all firm; and 
Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down 
every day and night to keep watch in the cellar 
as usual. He was there about two in the after- 
noon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain 
and Lord Mounteagle threw open the door and 
looked in. " Who are you, friend?" said they. 
" Why." said Fawkes, " I am Mr. Pcrcy'sserv- 
ant. and am looking after his store of fuel here. ' ' 
" Your master has laid in a pretty good store," 
they returned, and shut the door, and went 
away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the 
other conspirators to tell them all was quiet, 
and went back and shut himself up in the dark 
black cellar again, where he heard the bell go 
twelve o'clock, and usher in the fifth of Novem- 
ber. About two hours afterward he slowly 
opened the door, and came out to iook about 
him. in his old prowling way. He was instantly 
seized and bound by e party of soldiers under 
Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watch upon 
him, some touchwood, some tinder, some slow 
matches; and there was a dark iantern with a 
candle in it, lighted, behind the door. Pie had 
his boots and spurs on — to ride to the ship, I sup- 



pose — and it was well for the soldiers that they 
look him so suddenly. If they had left him 
but a moment's time to light a match, he cer- 
tainly wou Id have tossed it m among the pow- 
der, and blown up himself and them. 

They took him to the King's bedchamber first 
of all, and there the King (causing him to be 
held very tight, and keeping a good way off) 
asked him how he could have the heart to in- 
tend to destroy so many innocent people. " Be- 
cause," said Guy Fawkes, "desperate diseases 
need desperate remedies." To a little Scotch 
favorite, with a face like a terrier, who asked 
him (with no particular wisdom) why he had 
collected so much guupowder, he replied, be- 
cause he had nieanUo blow Scotchmen back to J 
Scotland, and it would take a deal of powder to 
do that. Next day he was carried to the Tower, 
but would make no confession. Even after 
being horribly tortured, he confessed nothing 
that the Government did not already know; 
though he must have been in a fearful state— as 
his signature, still preserved, in contrast with 
his natural handwriting before he was put upon 
the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. 
Bates, a very different man, soon said the 
Jesuits had had to do with the plot, and prob- 
ably, under the torture, would as readily have 
said anything. Tresham, taken and put in the 
Tower too, made confessions and unmade them, 
and died of an illness that was heavy upon him. > 
Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own 
horses all the way to Dunchurch, did not mount 
to escape until the middle of the day, when the 
news of the plot was all over London. On the 
road he came up with the two Wrights, Gates- [ 
by, and Percy; aud they all galloped together 
into Northamptonshire. ' Thence to Dunchurch, 
where they found the proposed party assembled, i 
Finding, however, that there had been a plot, 
and that it had been discovered, the party dis- 
appeared in the course of the night, and left 
them alone with Sir Everaid Digby. Away, 
they all rode again, through 'Warwickshire and 
Worcestershire, to a house called Holbeach, on 
the borders of Staffordshire. They tried to j 
raise the Catholics on their way, but were in- 
dignantly driven off by them. All this time 
they were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Wor- 
cester, and a fast-increasing concourse of riders. 
At last, resolving to defend themselves at Hol- 
beach, they shutlhemselves up in the house, and 
put some wet powder before the fire to dry. 
But it blew up, and Catesby was singed and 
blackened, and almost killed, and some of the 
others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that 
they must die, they resolved to die there, and, 
with only their swords in their hands, appeared 
at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and 
his assistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, 
after Thomas had been hit in the right arm, 
which dropped powerless by his side, " Stand 
by me, Tom, and we will die together!" — which 
they did, being shot through the body by two 
bullets from one gun. John Wright, and Chris- 
topher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. 
Rookwood aud Digby were taken: the former 
with a broken arm,"" and a wound in his body 
too. 

It was the fifteenth of January before the trial 
of Guy Fawkes, and such of the other con- 
spirators as were left alive, came on. They 
were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and 
quartered: some in St. Paul's "Churchyard, on 
the top of Ludgate Hill ; some before the Par- 
liament House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry 
Garnet, to whom the dreadful design was said 
to have been communicated, was taken and 
tried; and two of his servants, as well as a poor 
priest who was taken with him, were tortured 
without mercy. He himself was not tortured, 
! but was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers 
and traitors, and so was made unfairly to con- 
vict' himself out of his own mouth. He said, 
upon his trial, that he had done all he could to 
prevent the deed, and that he could not make 
! public what had been told him in confession— 
1 though I am afraid he knew of the plot in other 
ways" He was found guilty and executed, after 
a manful defense, and the Catholic Church 
! made a saint of him: some rich and powerful 
persons, who had had nothing to do with the 
! project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the 
' Star Chamber: the Catholics, in general, who 
had recoiled with horror from the idea of the 
infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under 
more severe laws than before; and this was the 
end of the Gunpowder Plot. 



Second Part 

His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, 
have blown the House of Commons into the air 
himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it knew 
no bounds all through his reign. When he was 
hard pressed for money he was obliged to order 
it to meet, as he could get no money without it; 
and when it asked him first to abolish some of 
the monopolies in necessaries of life which were 
a great grievance to the people, and to redress 
other public wrongs, he flew into a rage, and 
got rid of it again. At one time he "wanted 
it to consent to the Union of England with 
Scotland, and quarreled about .that. .'-. r . an- 
other time it "wanted him to put down a 
most iufamous Church abuse, called the High 
Commission Court, and he quarreled with 
it about that, At another time it entreated 
him not to be quite so fond of his arch 
bishops and bishops, who made speeches iu 
his praise too awful to be related, but to 
have some little consideration for the poor Pur- 
itan clergy who were persecuted for preach- 
ing in their own w T ay, and not according to the 
archbishops and bishops; and they quarreled 
about that. In short, what with haling the 
House of Commons, and pretending not to hate 
it; and what with now sending some of its 
members who opposed him to Newgate or to the 
Tower, and now telling the rest that they must 
not presume to make speeches about the public 
affairs, which could not possibly concern them; 
and what with cajoling, and bullying, and 
frightening, and being frightened; the House of 
Commons Vas the plague of his Sowship's exist- 
' ence. It was pretty firm, however, in main- 
taining its rights, anil insisting that the Parlia- 
; ment should make the laws, and not the King 

■ by his own single proclamations (which he tried 
hard to do); and his Sowship was so often dis- 

' tressed for money, in consequence, that he sold 
every sort of title and public office as if they 

' were merchandise, and even invented a new 
dignity called a Baronetcy, which anybody 

i could buy for a thousand pounds. 

These disputes with his Parliaments, and his 

■ hunting, aud his drinking, and his lying in bed 
I — for he was a great sluggard — occupied his 

Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he 
chiefly passed in hugging and slobbering his 
favorites. The first of these was Sir Philip 
Herbert, who had no knowledge whatever, ex- 
cept of dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom 
he soon made Earl of Montgomery. The next, 
and a much more famous one, was Robert Carr, 
or Ker (for it is not certain which was his right 
[ name), who came from the Border country and 
! whom he soon made Viscount Rochester, aud 
afterward Earl of Somerset. The way in winch 
his Sowship doted on this handsome young man 
is even more odious to think of than the way in 
which the really great men of England con- 
descended to bow down before him. The favor- 
ite's great friend was a certain Sir Thomas 
Overbury, who wrote his love letters for him, 
and assisted him iu the duties of his many high 
places, which his own ignorance prevented him 
from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas 
having just manhood enough to dissuade the 
favorite from a wicked marriage with the beau- 
tiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a di- 
vorce from her husband for the purpose, the said 
Countess, in her rage, got Sir Thomas put into 
' the Tower, aud there poisoned him. Then the 
favorite and this bad woman were publicly mar- 
ried by the King's pet bishop, with as much to 
do and rejoicing as if he had been the best man, 
and she the best woman, upon the face of the 
earth. 

But, after a longer sunshine than might have 
been expected — of seven years or so, that is to 
j say— another handsome young man started up 
and eclipsed the Earl of Somerset. This was 
George Villiers, the youngest son of a Leicester- 
shire gentleman : who came to court with all the 
Paris fashions on him, and could dance as well 
as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He 
soon danced himself into the £rood graces of his 
Sowship, and danced the other favorite out of 
favor. Then, it was all at once discovered that 
the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not de- 
served all those great promotions and mighty 
rejoicings, and they were separately tried for 
the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for 
other crimes. But, the King was so afraid of 
his late favorite's publicly telling some disgrace- 
ful things he knew of him— which he darkly 
threatened to do— that he was even examined 
with two men standing, one on either side of 
him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready .to 
throw it over his head and stop his mouth if he 



56 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



should break out with what lie had it in his 
po wer to tel 1. So, a very lame affair was pur- 
posely made of the trial, aud his punishment 
was an allowance of four thousand pounds a 
year in retirement, while the Countess was par- 
cloned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. 
They hated one another by this time, and lived 
to revile and torment each other some years. 

While these events were in progress, and 
while his Sowship was making such an exhi- 
bition of himself, from day to day and from 
year to year, as is not often seen in any sty , 
three remarkable deaths took place in England. 
The first was that of the Minister, Robert Cecil, 
Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had 
never been strong, being deformed from his 
birth. He said at last that he had no wish to 
live; and no Minister need have had, with his 
experience of the meanness and wickedness of 
those disgraceful times. The second was that 
of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his 
Sowship mightily by privately marrying 
William Seymour, son of Lord Beauchamp, 
■who was a descendant of King Henry the 
Seventh, and who, his Sowship thought, might 
consequently increase and strengthen any claim 
she might one day set up to th~e throne. She 
was separated from her husband (who was put 
in the Tower); and thrust into a boat to be con- 
fined at Durham. She escaped in a man's dress 
to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to 
France, but unhappily missed her husband, who 
had escaped too. and was soon taken. She went 
raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died 
there after four years. The last, and the most im- 
portant, of these three deaths was that of Prince 
Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth 
year of his age. He was a promising young- 
Prince, and greatly liked; a quiet well-conducted 
youth, of whom two very good things are 
known: first, that his father was jealous of him; 
secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter 
Raleigh, languishing through all those years in 
the Tower, and often said that no man but his 
father would keep such a bird in such a cage. 
On the occasion of the preparations for the mar- 
riage of his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, with 
a foreign Prince (and an unhappy marriage it 
turned out), he came from Richmond, where he 
had been very ill, to greet his new brother-in- 
law at the palace at Whitehall. There he 
played a great-game at tennis in his shirt, though 
it was very cold weather, and was seized with 
an alarming illuess, and died within a fortnight 
ot a putrid fever. For this young Prince Sir 
Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the 
Tower, the beginning of a History of the 
World: a wonderful instance how little his 
Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, 
however long he might imprison his body. 

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who 
had many faults, but who never showed so many 
merits as in trouble aud adversity may bring me 
at once to the end of his sad story. After an 
imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, 
lie proposed to resume those old sea voyages of 
his, and to go to South America in search of 
gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish 
to be on good terms with the Spaniards, through 
whose territory Sir Walter must pass (he had 
long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a 
Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness 
to get hold of the gold, did not know what to 
do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter free, tak- 
ing securities for his return; and Sir Walter fit- 
ted out an expedition at his own cost, and, on 
the twenty-eighth of March, one thousand six 
hundred and seventeen, sailed away in com- 
mand of one of its ships, which he ominously 
called the Destiny. The expedition failed ; the 
common men, not finding the gold they had ex- 
pected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between 
Sir Walter and the Spaniards, who hated him 
for old successes of his against them ; and he 
took and burnt a little town called St. Thomas. 
For this he was denounced to his Sowship by 
the Spanish Embassador as a pirate ; and return- 
ing almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and 
fortunes shattered, his company of friends dis- 
persed, and his brave son (who had been one of 
them) killed, he was taken — through the treach- 
ery of Sir Lewis Stukely, his near relation, a 
scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral — and was once 
again immured in his t prison-home of so many 
years. 

His Sowship being mightily disappointed in 
not getting any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh was 
tried as unfairly and with as many lies and 
evasions as the judges and law officers and every 
other authority in Church and State habitually 
practiced under such a King. After a great 
deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it 



was declared that he must die under his former 
sentence, now fifteen years old. So, on the 
twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six hun- 
dred and eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate 
House at Westminster to pass his last night on 
earth, and there he took leave of his good and 
faithful lady, who was worthy to have lived in 
better days. At eight o'clock next morning, 
after a cheerful breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup 
of good wine, he was taken to Old Palace Yard 
in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up, 
and where so many people of high degree were 
assembled to see him die, that it was a matter of 
some difficulty to get him through the crowd. 
He behaved most nobly, but, if anything lay 
heavy on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex, 
whose head he had seen roll oft; and he 
solemnly said that he had had no hand in bring- 
ing him to the block, and that he had shed 
tears for him when he died. As the morning 
was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come 
down to a fire for a little space aud warm him- 
self? But Sir Walter thanked him, and said no, 
he would rather it were done at once, for he was 
ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of 
an hour his shaking fit would come upon him if 
he were still alive, and his enemies might then 
suppose that he trembled for fear. With that, 
he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Chris- 
tian prayer. Before he laid his head upon the 
block he felt the edge of the ax, and said, with 
a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medi- 
cine, but would cure the worst disease. When 
he was bent down ready for death, he said to the 
executioner, finding that he hesitated, " What 
dost thou fear? Strike, man!" So, the ax 
came down, and struck his head off, in the sixty- 
sixth year of his age. 

The new favorite got on fast. He was made 
a Viscount, he was made Duke of Buckingham, 
he was made a Marquis, he was made -Master of 
the Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral — 
and the Chief Commander of the gallant English 
forces that had dispersed the Spanish Armada 
was displaced to make room for him. He had 
the whole kingdom at his disposal, and his 
mother sold all the profits and honors of the 
State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all 
over with diamonds and other precious stones, 
from his hatband and his earrings to his shoes. 
Yet he was an ignorant, presumptuous, swag- 
gering compound of knave and fool, with noth- 
ing but his beauty and his dancing to recom- 
mend him. This is the gentleman who called 
himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called 
his Majesty Your Sowship. His Sowship 
called him Steenie; it is supposed, because that 
was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. 
Stephen was generally represented in pictures 
as a handsome saint. 

His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits' 
end by his trimming between the general dislike 
of the Catholic religion at home, and his desire 
to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only 
means of getting a rich princess for his son's 
wife; apart of whose fortune he might cram 
into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles — or, as 
his Sowship called him, Baby Charles — being 
now Prince of Wales, the old project of a mar- 
riage with the Spanish King's daughter had 
been revived for him; and, as she could not 
marry a Protestant without leave from the Pope, 
his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote 
to his Infallibility, asking for it. The negotia- 
tion for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger 
space in great books than you can imagine, but 
the upshot of it all is. that when it had been 
held oft by the Spanish court for a long time, 
Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as 
Mr. Thomas Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see 
the Spanish Princess; that Baby Charles pre- 
tended to be desperately in love with her, and 
jumped off walls to look at her, and made a 
considerable fool of himself in a good manj r 
ways ; that she was called Princess of Wales, 
and that the whole Spanish court believed Baby 
Charles to be all but dying for her sake, as he 
expressly told them he was; that Baby Charles 
and Steenie came back to England, and were 
received with as much rapture as if they had 
been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles had 
actually fallen in love with Henrietta Maria, the 
French King's sister, whom he had seen in 
Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully fine and 
princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards 
all through; and that he openly said, with a 
chuckle, as soon as he was safe and sound at 
home again, that the Spaniards were great fools 
to have believed him. 

Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the 
favorite complained that the people whom they 
had deluded were dishonest. They made such 



misrepresentations of the treachery of the Span- 
iards in this business of the Spanish match, that 
the English nation became eager for a war with 
them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed 
at the idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, 
the Parliament granted money for the begin- 
ning of hostilities, and the treaties wilh Spain 
were publicly declared to be at an end. The 
Spanish embassador in London— probably with 
the help of the fallen favorite, the Earl of 
Somerset— being unable to obtain speech with 
his Sowship, slipped a paper into his hand, de- 
claring that he was a prisoner in his own 
house, and was entirely governed by Bucking- 
ham and his creatures. The first effect of this 
letter was that his Sowship began to cry and 
whine, and took Baby Charles away from 
Steenie, and went clown to Windsor, gabbling 
all sorts of nonsense. The end of it was that 
his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said 
he was quite satisfied. 

He had given the Prince and the favorite al- 
most unlimited power to settle anything with 
the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and he 
now, with a view to the French one, signed a 
treaty that all Roman Catholics in England 
should exercise their religion freely, and should 
never be required to take any oath contrary 
thereto. In return for this, and for other con- 
cessions much less to be defended, Henrietta 
Maria was to become the Prince's wife, and 
was to bring him a fortune of eight hundred 
thousand crowns. 

His Sowship's eyes were getting red with 
eagerly looking for the money, when the end of 
a gluttonous life came upon him ; and, after a 
forlnight's illness, on Sunday, the twenty-sev- 
enth of March, one thousand six hundred and 
twenty-five, he died. He had reigned twenty 
two years, and was fifty -nine years old. I 
know of nothing more abominable in history 
than the adulation that was lavished on this 
King, and the vice and corruption that such a 
barefaced habit of lying produced in his court. 
It is much to be doubted whether one man of 
honor, and not utterly self -disgraced, kept his 
place near James the First. Lord Bacon, that 
able and wise philosopher, as the First Judge in 
the Kingdom in this reign, became a public 
spectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and in 
his base flattery of his Sowship, and in his 
crawling servility to his dog and slave, dis- 
graced himself even more. But, a creature like 
his Sowship set upon a throne is like the 
Plague, and everybody receives infection from 
him. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

ENGLAND TJNDER CHARLES THE FIRST. 

Baby Charles became King Charles the 
First in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Unlike 
his father, he was usually amiable in his private 
character, and grave and dignified in his bear- 
ing; but, like his father, he had monstrously 
exaggerated notions of the rights of a King, and 
was evasive, and not to be trusted. If his word 
could have been relied upon, his history might 
have had a different end. 

His first care was to send over that insolent 
upstart, Buckingham, lo bring Henrietta Maria 
from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occa- 
sion Buckingham — with his usual audacity— 
made love to the young Queen of Austria, and 
was very indignant indeed with Cardinal 
Richelieu, the French Minister, for thwarting 
his intentions. The English people were very 
well disposed to like their new Queen, and to re- 
ceive her with great favor when she came among 
them as a stranger. But, she held the Protest- 
ant religion in great dislike, and brought over a 
crowd of unpleasant priests, who made her do 
some very ridiculous things, and forced them- 
selves upon the public notice in many disagree- 
able ways. Hence the people soon came to dis- 
like her, and she soon came to dislike them; 
and she did so much all through this reign in 
setting the King (who was dotingly fond of her) 
against his subjects, that it would have been 
better for him if she had never been born. 

Now, you are to understand that King 
Charles the First — of his own determination to 
be a high and mighty King not to be called to 
account by anybody, and urged on by his 
Queen besides — deliberately set himself to put 
his Parliament down, and to put himself up. 
You are also to understand that even in pursuit 
of this wrong idea (enough in itself to have 
ruined any King) he never took a straight 
course, but always took a crooked one. 

He was bent upon war with Spain, though 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



5T 



neither the House of Commons nor the peo- 
ple were quite clear as to the justice of that war, 
now that th.3y began to think a little more 
about the story of the Spanish match. But the 
King rushed into it hotly, raised money by ille- 
gal means to meet its expenses, and encountered 
a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the very first 
year of his reign. An expedition to ,Cadiz had 
been made in the hope of plunder, but as it was 
not successful, it was necessary to get a grant 
of money from the Parliament; and when they 
met, in no very complying humor, the King- 
told them " to make haste to let him have it, or 
it would be the worse for themselves." Not put 
in a more complying humor by this, they im- 
peached the King's favorite, the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, as the cause (which he undoubtedly 
was) of many great public grievances and 
wrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the 
Parliament without getting the money he 
wanted ; and, when the Lords implored him to 
consider and grant a little delay, he replied, 
" No, not one minute." He then began to raise 
money for himself by the following means 
among others. 

He levied certain duties called tonnage and 
poundage which had not been granted by the 
Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no 
other power; he called upon the seaport towns 
to furnish, and to pay all the cost for three 
months of, a fleet of armed ships; and he re- 
quired the people to unite in lending him large 
sums of money, the repayment of which was 
very doubtful. If the poor people refused,' they 
were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry 
refused, they were sent to prison. Five gentle- 
men, named Sir Thomas Darnel, John Corbet, 
Walter Earl, John Heveningham, and Everard 
Hampden, for refusing, were taken up by a 
warrant of the King's Privy Council, and were 
sent to prison without any cause but the King's 
pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. 
Then the question came to be solemnly tried, 
whether this was not a violation of Magna 
Charta, and an encroachment by the King on 
the highest rights of the English people. His 
lawyers contended No, because to encroach 
upon the rights of the English people would be 
to do wrong, and the King could do no wrong. 
The accommodating judges decided in favor of 
this wicked nonsense; and here was a fatal 
dvision between the King and the people. 

For all this, it became necessary to call 
another Parliament. The people, sensible of 
the danger in which their liberties were, chose 
for it those who were best known for their de- 
termined opposition to the King; but still the 
King, quite blinded by his determination to 
carry everything before him, addressed them, 
when they met, in a contemptuous manner, and 
just told them in so many words that he had 
only called them together because he wauted 
money. The Parliament, strong enough and 
resolute enough to know that they would lower 
his tone, cared little for what he said, and laid 
before him one of the great documents of his- 
tory, which is called the Petition of Right, re- 
quiring that the free men of England should no 
longer be called upon to lend the King money, 
and should no longer be pressed or imprisoned 
for refusing to do so; further, that the free men 
of England should no longer be seized bj r the 
King's special mandate or warrant, it being 
contrary to their rights and liberties, and the 
laws of their country. At first the King re- 
turned an answer to this petition, in which he 
tried to shirk it altogether; but, the House of 
Commons then showing their determination to 
go on with the impeachment of Buckingham, 
the King in alarm returned an answer, giving 
his consent to all that was required of him. He 
not only afterward departed from his word and 
honor on these points over and over again, but, 
at this very time, he did the mean and dissem- 
bling act of publishing his first answer, and not 
his second— merely that the people might sup- 
pose that the Parliament had not got the better 
of him. 

The pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his 
own wounded vanity, had by this time involved 
the country in war with France, as well as with 
Spain. For such miserable causes and such 
miserable creatures are wars sometimes made! 
But he was destined to do little more mischief 
in thjs world. One morning as he was goin°- 
0Uu of his house to his carriage, he turned to 
speak to a certain Colonel Fryer who was with 
him; and he was violently stabbed with a knife, 
which the murderer left sticking in his heart. 
This happened in his hall. He had had angry 
words up stairs, just before, with some French 
gentlemen, who were immediately suspected by 



his servants, and had a close escape from being- 
set upon and killed. In the midst of the noise, 
the real murderer, who had gone to the kitchen 
and might easily have got away, drew his 
sword and cried out, "I am the man!" His 
name was John Felton, a Protestant and a re- 
tired officer in the army. He .said he had had 
no personal ill will to the Duke, but had killed 
him as a curse to the country. He had aimed 
his blow well, for Buckingham had only had 
time to cry out "Villain!" and then he drew 
out the knife, fell against a table, and died. 

The Council made a mighty business of ex- 
amining John Felton about this murder, though 
it was a plain case enough, one would think. 
He had come seventy miles to do it, he told 
them, and he did it for the reason he had de- 
clared ; if they put him upon the rack, as that 
noble Marquis of Dorset, whom he saw before 
him, had the goodness to threaten, -he gave that 
Marquis warning that he wouid accuse him as 
his accomplice! The King was unpleasantly 
anxious to have him racked, nevertheless; but, 
as the judges now found out that torture was 
contrary to the law of England — it is a pity they 
did not make the discovery a little sooner — John 
Felton was simply executed for the murder he 
had done. A .murder it undoubtedly was, and 
not in the least to be defended ; though he had 
freed England from one of the most profligate, 
contemptible, and base court favorites to whom 
it has ever yielded. 

A very different man now. arose. This was 
Sir Thomas Wentwovth, a Yorkshire gentle- 
man, who had sat m Parliament for a long time, 
and who had favored arbitrary and haughty 
principles, but who had gone over to the peo- 
ple's side on receiving offense from Bucking- 
ham. The King, much wanting such a man — 
for, besides, being naturally favorable to. the 
King's cause, he had great abilities — made him 
first a Baron, and then a Viscount, and gave 
him high employment, and won him most com- 
pletely. 

A Parliament however was still in existence 
and was not to be won. On the twentieth of 
January, one thousand six hundred and twenty- 
nine, Sir John Eliot, a great man who had been 
active m the Petition of Right, brought forward 
other strong resolutions against the King's 
chief instruments, and called upon the Speaker 
to put them to the vote. To this the Speaker 
answered, " he was commanded otherwise by 
the King," and got up to leave the chair — 
which, according to the rules of the House of 
Commons, would have obliged it to adjourn 
without doing anything more — when two mem- 
bers, named Mr. Hollis and Mr. Valentine, held 
him down. A scene of great confusion arose 
among the members; and while many swords 
were drawn and flashing about, the King, who 
was kept informed of all that was going on, told 
the captain of his guard to go down to the 
House and force the doors. The resolutions 
were by that time, however, voted, and the 
House adjourned. Sir John Eliot, and those 
two members who had held the Speaker down, 
were quickly summoned before the Council. As 
they claimed it to be their privilege not to an- 
swer out of Parliament for anything they had 
said in it, they were committed to the Tower. 
The King then went down and dissolved the 
Parliament, in a speech wherein he made men- 
tion of ihese gentlemen as " Vipers " — which 
did not do him much good that ever 1 have 
heard of. 

As they refused to gain their liberty by say- 
ing they were sorry for what they had done, the 
King always remarkably unforgiving, never 
overlooked their offense. When they demanded 
to be brought up before the Court of King's 
Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of hav- 
ing them moved about from prison to prison, so 
that the writs issued for that purpose should 
not legally find them. At last they came before 
the Court, and were sentenced to heavy fines, 
and to be imprisoned during the King's pleas- 
ure. "When Sir John Eliot's health had quite 
given way, and he so longed for change of air 
and scene as to petition for his release.'the King- 
sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship 
himself) that the petition was not humble 
enough. When he sent another petition by his 
young son, in which he pathetically offered to 
go back to prison when his health was restored, 
if he might be released for its recovery, the 
King still disregarded it. When he died in the 
Tower, and his children petitioned to be al- 
lowed to take his body down to Cornwall, there 
to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the 
King returned for answer, "Let Sir John 
Eliot's bod}' be buried in the church 'of that 



parish where he died " AH this was like a very 
little King indeed, I think. 

And now, for twelve long years, steadily pur- 
suing his design of setting himself up and put- 
ting the people down, the King called no Parlia- 
ment; but ruled without one. If twelve thou- 
sand volumes were written in his praise i.;.^ a 
good many have been), it would still remain a 
tact, impossible to be denied, that for twelve 
years King Charles the First reigned in Eng- 
land unlawfully and despotically, seized upon 

, his subjects' goods and money at his pleasure, 
and punished according to his unbridled will 
all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion 
with some people to think that this King's ca- 
reer was cut short; but I must say myself that 

; I think he ran a pretty long one. 

William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
was the King's right-hand man in the religious 
part of the putting down of the people's ftber- 

, ties. Land, who was a sincere man, of large 
learning, but small sense — for the two things 
sometimes go together in very different quanti- 
ties — though a Protestant, held opinions so near 

| those of the Catholics, that the Pope wanted 
to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have 
accepted that favor. He looked upon vows, 
robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth, as 
amazingly important in religious ceremonies; 
and he brought in an immensity of bowing 
and candle-snuffing. He also regarded arch- 
bishops and bishops as a sort of miraculous per- 
sons> and was inveterate in the last degree against 
any who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he 
offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state 
of much pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergy- 
man,- named Leighton, was pilloried, whipped, 
branded in the cheek, and had one of his ears 
cut off and one of his nostrils slit, for calling 
bishops trumpery and the inventions of men. 
He originated on a Sunday morning the prose- 
cution of William Prynne, a barrister who was 
of similar opinions, and who was fined a thou- 
sand pounds; who was pilloried; who had his 
ears cut off on two occasions — one ear at a time 
—and who was imprisoned for life. He highly 
approved of the punishment of Dr. Bastwick, 

I a physician; who was also fined a thou- 
sand pounds; and who afterward had kin ears 
cut off, and was imprisoned for life. These 
were gentle methods of persuasion, some will 
tell you: I think they were rather calculated to 
be alarming to the people. 

In the money part of the putting down of the 
people's liberties the King was equally gentle, 
as some will tell you: as I think, equally alarm - 

| ing. He levied those duties of tonnage and 

! poundage, and increased them as he thought 
fit. He granted monopolies to companies of 
merchants on their paying him for them, not- 
withstanding the great complaints that had, for 
years and years, been made on the subject of 
monopolies. He fined the people for disobeying 
proclamations issued by his Sowship in direct 
violation of law. He revived the detested For- 
est laws, and took private property to himself 
as his forest right. Above all he determined to 
have what was called Ship Money; that is to 
say, money for the support of the fleet — not only 
from the seaports, but from all the counties of 
England : having found out that, in some an- 
cient time or other, all the counties paid it. The 
grievance of this ship money being somewhat 
too strong, John Chambers, a citizen of London, 
refused to pay his part of it. For this the Lord 
Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and for 
thai John Chambers brought a suit against the 
Lord Mayor. Lord Say, also, behaved like a real 
nobleman, and declared he would not pay. But 
the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship 
money was John Hampden, a gentleman of 
Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the " vi- 
pers " in the House of Commons when there 
was such a thing, and who had been the bosom 
friend of Sir John Eliot. This case was tried 
before the twelve judges in the Court of Ex- 
chequer, and again the King's lawyers said it 
was impossible that ship money could be 
wrong, because the King could do no wrong, 
however hard he tried— and he really did try 
very hard during these twelve years. Seven of 
the judges said that was quite true, and Mr. 
Hampden was bound to pay: five of the judges 
said that was quite false, and Mr. Hampden was 
not bound to pay. So the King triumphed (as 
he thought) by making Hampden the most 
popular man in England ; where matters were 
getting to that height now, that many honest 
Englishmen could not endure their country, and 
sailed away across the seas to found a colony in. 
Massachusetts Bay, in America. It is said that 
Hampden himself, and his relation Oliver Crom- 



58 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



well, were going with a company of such voy- 
agers, and were actually on board ship, when 
they were stopped by a proclamation, prohibit- 
ing sea captains to carry out such passengers 
without the Royal license. But oh! it would 
have been well for the King if he had let them go ! 

This was the state of England. I C Laud had 
been a madman just broke loose, he could not 
have done more mischief than he did in Scotland. 
In his endeavors (in which he was seconded by 
the- King, then in person in that part of his 
dominions) to force his own ideas of ' bishops, 
and his own religious forms and ceremonies, 
upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a per- 
fect frenzy. They formed a solemn league, 
which they called The Covenant, for the pres- 
ervation of their own religious forms; they rose 
in arms throughout the whole country ; they sum 
moned all their men to prayers and sermons twice 
a day by beat of drum; they sang psalms, in 
which they compared their enemies to all the 
evil spirits that ever were heard of; and they 
solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword. 
At first I he King tried force, then treaty, then 
a Scottish Parliament which did not answer at 
all. Then he tried the Earl of Strafford, for 
merly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who, as Lord 
Went worth, had been governing Ireland. He, 
too, had carried it with a very high hand there, 
though to the benefit and prosperity of that 
country. 

Strafford and Laud were for conquering the 
Scottish people by force of arms. Other lords 
who were taken into council recommended that 
a Parliament should at last be called; to which 
the King unwillingly consented. So, on the 
thirteenth of April, one thousand six hundred 
and forty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, 
•was seen at Westminster. It is called the Short 
Parliament, for it lasted a very little while. 
While the members were all looking at one 
another, doubtful who would dare to speak, 
Mr. Pym arose and set forth all that the King 
had done unlawfully during the past twelve 
years, and what was the position to which Eng- 
land was reduced This great example set, 
other members took courage and spoke the truth 
freely, though with great patience and modera- 
tion. The King, a little frightened, sent to say 
that, if tl^y would grant him a certain sum on 
certain terms, no more ship money should be 
raised. They debated the matter for two days ; 
and then, as they would not give him all he 
asked without promise or inquiry, he dissolved 
them. 

But they knew very well that he must have a 
Parliament now; and he began to make that dis- 
covery too, though rather late in the day. 
Wherefore, on the twenty-fourth of September, 
being then at York with an army collected 
against the Scottish people, but his own men 
sullen and discontented like the rest of the na- 
tion, the King told the great Council of the 
Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, 
that he would summon another Parliament to 
assemble on the third of November. The sol- 
diers of the Covenant had now forced their way 
into England, and had taken possession of the 
northern counties, where the coals are got. As 
it would never do to be without coals, and as 
the King's troops could make no head against 
the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce 
was made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken 
into consideration. Meanwhile the northern 
counties paid the Covenanters to leave the coals 
alone, and keep quiet. 

We have now disposed of the Short Parlia- 
ment. We have next to see what memorable 
things were done by the Long one. 



Second Part. 

The Long Parliament assembled on the third 
of November, one thousand six hundred and 
forty-one. That day week the Earl of Strafford 
arrived from 1'ork, very sensible that the spirit- 
ed and determined men who formed that Parlia- 
ment were no friends toward him, who had not 
only deserted the cause of the people, but who 
had on all occasions opposed himself to their 
liberties. The King told him, for his comfort, 
that the Parliament " should not hurt one hair 
of his head." But, on the very next day, Mr. 
Pym, in the House of Commons, and with great 
solemnity, impeached the Earl of Strafford as a 
traitor. He was immediately taken into cus- 
tody, and fell from his proud height. 

It was the twenty-second of March before he 
was brought to trial in Westminster Hall; 
where, although he was very ill and suffered 
great pain,' he defended himself with such 
ability and majesty, that ii was doubtful whether 



he would not get the best of it. But, on the 
thirteenth day of the trial, Pym produced in the 
House of Commons a copy of some notes of a 
Council, found by young Sir Harry Vane in a 
red velvet cabinet belonging to his father (Secre- 
tary Vane, who sat at the Council-table with the 
Earl), in which Strafford had distinctly told the 
King that he was free from all rules and obliga- 
tions of government, and might do with his peo- 
ple whatever he liked; and in which he had 
added — " You have an army in Ireland that 
you may employ to reduce this kingdom to 
obedience." It, was not clear whether by the 
words " this kingdom" he had really meant 
England or Scotland; but the Parliament con- 
tended that he meant England, and this was 
treason. At the same sitting of the House of 
Commons it was resolved to bring in a bill of 
attainder declaring the treason to have been 
committed: in preference to proceeding with 
the trial by impeachment, which would have re- 
quired the treason to be proved. 

So, a bill was brought in at once, was carried 
through the House of Commons by a large 
majority, and was sent up to the House of 
Lords. While it was still uncertain whether 
the House of Lords would pass it, and the King 
consent to it, Pym disclosed to the House of 
Commons that the King and Queen had both 
been plotting with the officers of the army to 
bring up the soldiers and control the Parlia- 
ment, and also to introduce two hundred sol- 
diers into the Tower of London to effect the 
Earl's escape. The plotting with the army was 
revealed by one George Goring, the son of a 
lord of that name: a bad fellow, who was one 
of the original plotters, and turned traitor. The 
King had actually given his warrant for the ad- 
mission of the two hundred men into the 
Tower, and they would have got in too, but for 
the refusal of the governor — a sturdy Scotch- 
man of the name of Balfour — to admit them. 
These matters being made public, great num- 
bers of people began to riot outside the Houses 
of Parliament, and to cry out for the execution 
of the Earl of Strafford, as one of the King's 
chief instruments against them. The bill passed 
the House of Lords while the people were in 
this state of agitation, and was laid before the 
King for his assent, together with another bill 
declaring that the Parliament then assembled 
should not be dissolved or adjourned without 
their own consent. The King — not unwilling 
to save a faithful servant, though he had no 
great attachment for him — was in some doubt 
what to do; but he gave his consent to both 
bills, although he in his heart believed that the 
bill against the Earl of Strafford was unlawful 
and unjust. The Earl had written to him, tell- 
ing him that he was willing to die for his sake. 
But he had not expected that his Royal master 
would take him at his word quite so readily; 
for, when he heard his doom, he laid his hand 
upon his heart, and said, " Put not your trust 
in Princes!" 

The King, who never could be straightfor- 
ward and plain, through one single day or 
through one single sheet of paper, wrote a letter 
to theLords, and sent it by "the young Prince of 
Wales, entreating them to prevail with the Com- 
mons that " that unfortunate man should fulfill 
the natural course of his life in a close imprison- 
ment." In a postscript to the very same letter 
he added, " If he must die, it were charity to 
reprieve him till Saturday." "If there had been 
any doubt of his fate, this weakness and mean- 
ness would have settled it. The very next day, 
which was the twelfth of May, he was brought 
out to be beheaded on Tower Hill. 

Archbishop Laud, who had been so fond of 
having people's ears cropped off and their noses 
slit, was now confined in the Tower too ; and, 
when the Earl went by his window to his death, 
he was there, at his request, to give him his 
blessing. They had been great friends in the 
King : s cause, and the Earl had written to him, 
in the days of their power, that he thought it 
would be an admirable thing to have Mr. Hamp- 
den publicly whipped for refusing to pay the 
ship money. However, those high and mighty 
doings were over now, and the Earl went his 
way to death with dignity and heroism. The 
governor wished hirn to get into a coach at the 
Tower gate, for fear the people should tear him 
to pieces; but he said it was all one to him 
whether he died by the ax or by the people's 
hands. So, he walked with a firm tread and 
a stately look, and sometimes pulled off his 
hat to (hem as he passed along. They were 
profoundly quiet. He made a speech on the 
scaffold from some notes he had prepared (the 
paper was found lying there after his head was 



struck off), and one blow of the ax killed him, 
in the forty-ninth year of his age. 

This bold and daring act the Parliament ac- 
companied by other famous measures, all orig- 
inating (as even this did) in the King's having' 
so grossly and so long abused his power. The 
name of Delinquents was applied to all sheriffs 
! and other officers who had been concerned in 
raising the ship money, or any other money, 
from the people in an unlawful manner; the 
Hampden judgment was reversed; the judges 
I who had decided against Hampden were called 
upon to give large securities that they would 
! take such consequences as Parliament might im- 
j pose upon them; and one was arrested as he sat 
in High Court, and carried off to prison. Laud 
I was impeached ; the unfortunate victims whose 
ears had been cropped, aftd whose aoses had 
been slit, were brought out of prison in tri- 
umph; and a bill was passed declaring that a 
Parliament should be called every third year, 
and that, if the King and the King's officers 
did not call it, the people should assemble of ' 
themselves and summon it, as of their own right 
and power. Great illuminations and rejoicings 
took place over all these things, and the coun 
try was wildly excited. That the Parliament 
took advantage of this excitement, and stirred 
them up by every means, there is no doubt; 
but you are always to remember those twelve 
long years, during which the King had tried so 
hard whether he really could do any wrong or 
not. 

All this time there was a great religious out- 
cry against the right of the Bishops to si! in Par- 
liament; to which the Scottish people particu- 
larly objected. The English were divided on 
j this subject, and partly on this account, and 
partly because they had had foolish expecta- 
tions that the Parliament would be able to take 
. off nearly all the taxes, numbers of them some- 
: times wavered and inclined toward the King. 

I believe myself that if, at this or almost any 
other period of his life, the King could have 
been trusted by any man not out of his senses, 
he might have saved himself and kept his j 
throne. But, on the English army being dis- 1 
banded, he plotted with the officers again, as he 
had done before, and established the fact beyond 
all doubt by putting his signature of approval 
to a petition against the Parliamentary leaders, 
which was drawn up by certain officers. When 
the Scottish army was disbanded, he went to 
Edinburgh in four days— which was going very 
'fast at that time— to plot aaain, and so darkly, 
too, that it is difficult to decide what his whole 
object was. Some suppose that he wanted to 
gain over the Scottish Parliament, as he did, in 
. fact, gain over, by presents and favors, many 
Scottish lords and men of power. Some think 
that he went to -get proofs against the Parlia- 
mentary leaders in England of their having trea- 
sonably invited the Scottish people to come and 
help them. With whatever object he went to 
j Scotland, he did little good by going. At the 
j instigation of the Earl of Montrose, a desperate 
man who was then in prison for plotting, he 
tried to kidnap three Scottish lords who es- 
caped. A committee of the Parliament at home, 
; who had followed to watch him, writing an ac- 
' count of this Incident, as it was called, to the 
Parliament, the Parliament made a fresh stir 
about it; were, or feigned to be, much alarmed 
for themselves; and wrote to the Earl of Essex, 
the commander-in-chief, for a guard to protect 
: them. 

It is not absolutely proved that the King 
plotted in Ireland besides, but it is very proba- 
! ble that he did, and that the Queen did, and 
lhat he had some wild hope of gaining the Irish 
people over to his side by favoring a rise among 
them. Whether or no, they did rise in a most 
' brutal and savage rebellion; in which, encour- 
aged by their priests, they committed such 
; atrocities upon numbers of the English, of both 
| sexes and of all ages, as nobody could believe, 
but for their being related pn oath by eye-wit- 
nesses. Whether one hundred thousand or two 
hundred thousand Protestants were murdered 
i in this outbreak is uncertain; but, that it was as 
ruthless and barbarous an outbreak as ever was 
known among any savage people is certain. 

The King came home from Scotland 1 deter- 
mined to make a great struggle for his lost 
power. He believed that, through his presents 
and favors, Scotland would take no part against 
him; and the Lord Mayor of London received 
him with such a magnificent dinner, that he 
thought he must have become popular again in 
England. It would take a good many Lord 
Mayors, however, to make a people, and the 
King soon found himself mistaken. 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



59 



Not so soon, though, but that there was a 
great opposition in the Parliament to a cele- 
brated paper put forth by Pym and Hampden 
and the rest, called "The Remonstrance," 
which set forth all the illegal acts that the King 
had ever done, but politely laid the blame of 
them on his bad advisers. Even when it was 
passed and presented to him, the King still 
thought himself slrong enough to discharge 
Balfour from his command in the Tower, and 
to put in his place a man of bad character; to 
whom the Commons instantly objected, and 
whom he was obliged to abandon. At this time, 
the old outcry about the Bishops became louder 
than ever, and the old Archbishop of York was 
so near being murdered as he went down to the 
House of Lords— being laid hold of by the mob, 
and violently knocked about, in return for very 
foolishly scolding a shrill boy who was yelping 
out "No Bishops!"— that he sent for all the 
Bishops who were in town, and proposed to 
them to sign a declaration that, as they could no 
longer without danger to their lives attend their 
duty in Parliament, they protested against the 
lawfulness of everything done in their absence. 
This they asked the King to send to the House 
of Lords, which he did. Then the House of 
Commons impeached the whole party of 
Bishops, and sent them off to the Tower. 

Taking no warning from this; but encour- 
aged by there being a moderate party in the 
Parliament who objected to these strong meas- 
ures, the King, on the third of January, one 
thousand six hundred and forty-two, took the 
rashest step that ever was taken by mortal man. 

Of his own accord, and without advice, he 
sent the Attorney-General to the House of 
Lords, to accuse of treason certain members of 
Parliament who, as popular leaders, were the 
most obnoxious to him: Lord Kimbolton, Sir 
Arthur Haselrig, DenzilHollis, J.ohn Pym (they 
used to call him King Pym, he possessed such 
power, and looked so big), John Hampden, and 
William Strode. The houses of those members 
lie caused to be entered, and their papers to be 
sealed up. At the same time, he sent a mes- 
senger to the House of Commons, demauding to 
have the Ave gentlemen who were members of 
that House immediately produced. To this the 
House replied that they should appear as soon 
as there was any legal charge against them, and 
immediately adjourned. 

Next day, the House of Commons send into 
the City to let the Lord Mayor now that their 
privileges are invaded by the King, and that 
there is no safety for anybody or anything. 
Then, when the five members are gone out of 
the way, down comes the King himself, with 
all his "guard and from two to three hundred 
gentlemen and soldiers, of whom the greater 
part were armed. These he leaves in the hall; 
and then, with his nephew at his side, goes into 
the House, takes off his hat, and walks up to 
the Speaker's chair. The Speaker leaves it, the 
King stauds in front of it, looks about him 
steadily for a little while, and says he has come 
for those five members. No one speaks, and 
then he calls John Pym by name. No one 
speaks, and then he calls Denzil Hollis by name. 
No one speaks, and then he asks the Speaker of 
the House where those five members are? The 
Speaker, answering on his knee, nobly replies 
that he is the servant of that House, and that he 
has neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, 
anything but what the House commands him. 
Upon this, the King, beateu from that time 
evermore, replies that he will seek them him- 
self, for they have committed treason ; and goes 
out, with his hat in his hand, amid some audi- 
ble murmurs from the members. 

No words can describe the hurry that arose 
out of doors when all this was known. The five 
members had gone for safety to a house in Cole- 
man Street, in the City, where they were guarded 
all night; and, indeed, ths whole city watched 
in arm9 like an army. At ten o'clock in the 
morning, the King, already frightened at what 
be had done, came to the 'Guildhall, with only 
half a dozen lords, and made a speech to the 
people, hoping they would not shelter those 
whom he accused of treason. Next day he is- 
sued a proclamation for the apprehension of the 
five members; but the Parliament minded it so 
little, that they made great arrangements for 
having them brought down to Westminster in 
great, state five days afterward. The King was 
so alarmed now at his own imprudence, if not 
for his own safety, that he left his palace at 
Whitehall, and went away with his Queen and 
children to Hampton Court. 

It was the eleventh of May when the five 
members were carried in state and triumph to 



Westminster. They were taken by water. The 
river could not be seen for the boats on it; and 
the five members were hemmed in by barges 
full of men and great guns, ready to protect 
them at any cost. Along the Strand a large 
body of the train-bands of London, under their 
commander, Skippon, marched to be ready to 
assist the little fleet. Beyond them came a 
crowd who choked the streets, roaring inces- 
santly about the Bishops and the Papists, and 
crying out contemptuously, as they passed 
Whitehall, " What has become of the King?" 
With this great noise outside the House of Com- 
mons, and with great silence within, Mr. Pym 
rose and informed the House of the great kind- 
ness with which they had been received in the 
City. Upon that, the House called the sheriffs 
in and thanked them, and requested the train- 
bands, under their commander Skippon, to 
guard the House of Commons every day. Then 
came four thousand men on horseback out of 
Buckinghamshire, offering their services as a 
guard too, and bearing a petition to the King, 
complaining of the injury that had been done 
to Mr Hampden, who was their county man, 
and much beloved and honored. 

When the King set off for Hampton Court, 
the gentlemen and soldiers who had been with 
him followed him out of town as far as Kings- 
ton-upon=Thames; next day, Lord Digby came 
to them from the King at Hampton Court, in 
his coach and six, to inform them that the King- 
accepted their protection. This, the Parliament 
said, was making war against the kingdom, and 
Lord Digby fled abroad. The Parliament then 
immediately applied themselves to getting hold 
of the military power of the country, well know- ] 
ing that the King was already trying hard to use 
it against them, and that he had secretly sent I 
the Earl of Newcastle to Hull, to secure a valua- 
ble magazine of arms and gunpowder that was 
there. In those times every" county had its own 
magazines of arms a"nd powder, for its own 
train-bands or militia; so, the Parliament 
brought in a bill claiming the right (which up 
to this time had belonged to the King) of ap- 
pointing the Lord Lieutenants of counties, who 
commanded these train-bands; also, of having 
all the forts, castles, and garrisons in the king- 
dom put into the hands of such governors as 
they, the Parliament, could confide in. It also 
passed a law depriving the Bishops of their 
votes. The King gave his assent to that bill, 
but would not abandon the right of appointing 
the Lord Lieutenants, though he said he was 
willing to appoint such as might be suggested 
to hint by the Parliament. When the Earl of 
Pembroke asked him whether he would not 
give way on that question for a time, he said, 
"By God! not for one hour!" and upon this he 
and the Parliament went to war. 

His young daughter was betrothed to the 
Prince of Orange. On pretense of taking her to 
the country of her future husband, the Queen 
was already got safely away to Holland, there 
to pawn the Crown jewels for money to raise 
an army on the King's side. The Lord Ad- 
miral being sick, the House of Commons now 
'named the Earl of Warwick to hold his place 
for a year. The King named another gentle- 
man; the House of Commons took its own way, 
and the Earl of Warwick became Lord Admiral 
without the King's consent. The Parliament 
sent orders down to Hull to have that magazine 
removed to London; the King went down to 
Hull to take it himself. The citizens would 
not admit him into the town, and the governor 
would not admit him into the castle. The Par- 
liament resolved that whatever the two Houses 
passed, and the King would not consent to, 
should be called an Ordinance, and should be 
as much a law as if he did consent to it. The 
King protested against this, and gave notice 
that" these ordinances were not to be obeyed. 
The King, attended by the majority of the 
House of Peers, and by many members of the 
House of Commons, established himself at 
York. The Chancellor went to him with the 
Great Seal, and the Parliament made a new 
Great Seal. The Queen sent over a ship full of 
arms and ammunition, and the King issued let- 
ters to borrow money at high interest. The 
Parliament raised twenty regiments of foot and 
seventy-five troops of horse; and the people 
williugly aided them with their money, plate, 
jewelry, and trinkets — the married women 
even with their wedding-rings. Every member 
of Parliament who could raise a troop or a regi- 
ment in his own part of the country, dressed it 
according to his taste and in his own colors, 
and commanded it. Foremost among them all, 
Oliver Cromwell raised a troop of horse — thor- 



oughly in earnest and thoroughly well armed — 
who were, perhaps, the best soldiers that ever 
were seen. 

In some of their proceedings this famous Par- 
liament passed the bounds of previous law and 
custom, yielded to and favored riotous assem- 
blages of the people, and acted tyrannically in 
imprisoning some who differed from the popu- 
lar leaders. But again you are always to remem- 
ber that the twelve years during which the King 
had had his own willful way had gone before; 
and that nothing could make the times what 
they might, could, would, or should have been, 
if those twelve years had never rolled away. 



Third Paet. 

I shall not try to relate the particulars of the 
great civil war between King Charles the First 
and the Long Parliament, which lasted nearly 
four years, and a full account of which would 
fill many large books. It was a sad thing that 
Englishmen should once more be fighting 
against Englishmen on English ground ; but, it 
is some consolation to know that on both sides 
there was great humanity, forbearance, and 
honor. The soldiers of the Parliament were far 
more remarkable for these good qualities than 
the soldiers of the King (many of whom fought 
for mere pay, without much caring for the 
cause); but those of the nobility and gentry who 
were on the King's side were so brave, and so 
faithful to him, that their conduct cannot but 
command our highest admiration. Among them 
were great numbers of Catholics, who took the 
Royal side because the Queen was so strongly 
of their persuasion. 

The King might have distinguished some of 
these gallant spirits, if he had been as cenerous 
a spirit himself, by giving them the command 
of his army. Instead of that, however, true to 
his old high notions of royalty, he intrusted it to 
his two nephews, Prince Rupert and Prince 
Maurice, who were of Royal blood, and came 
over from abroad to help him. It might have 
been better for him if they had stayed away; 
since Prince Rupert was an impetuous, hot- 
headed fellow, whose only idea was to dash into 
battle at all times .Tnd 'seasons, and lay about 
him. 

The general in-chief of the Parliamentary 
army was the Earl of Essex, a gentleman of 
honor and an excellent soldier. A little while 
before the war broke out, there had been some 
rioting at Westminster between certain officious 
law students and noisy soldiers, and the shop- 
keepers and their apprentices, and the general 
people in the streets. At that time the King's 
friends called the crowd Roundheads, because 
the apprentices wore short hair; the crowd, in 
return, called their opponents Cavaliers, mean- 
ing that they were a blustering set, who pre- 
tended to be very military. These two words 
now began to be used to distinguish the two 
sides in "the civil war. The Royalists also called 
the Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues, 
while the Parliamentary men called them Malig- 
nants, and spoke of themselves as the Godly, 
the Honest, and so forth. ' 

The war broke $mt at Portsmouth, where that 
double traitor Goring had again gone over to 
the King, and was besieged by the Parliament- 
ary troops. Upon this, the King proclaimed the 
Earl of Essex, and the officers serving under 
him. traitors, and called upon his loyal subjects 
to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the 
twenty-fifth of August. But his loyal subjects 
came about him in scanty numbers, and it was 
a windy gloomy day, and the Royal Standard 
got blown down, and the whole affair was very 
melancholy. The chief engagements, alter this, 
took place in the vale of the Red Horse near 
Banbury, at Brentford, at Devizes, at Chalgrave 
Field (where Mr. Hampden was so sorely 
wounded, whilefighting at the head of his men. 
that he died within a week), at Newbury (in 
which battle Lord Falkland, one of the best 
noblemen on the King's side was killed), at 
Leicester, at Naseby, at" Winchester, at Marston 
I Moor, near York, at Newcastle, and in many 
other parts of England and Scotland. These 
battles were attended with various successes. 
At one time the King was victorious; at another 
time the Parliament. But almost all the great 
and busy towns were against the King; and 
when it was considered necessary to fortify 
London, all ranks of people, from laboring men 
and women up to lords and ladies, worked hard 
together with heartinesss and good will. The 
most distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary 
side were Hampden, Sir Thomas Fairfax, and, 



60 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



above all, Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law i done. His trial lasted in all nearly a year, and, 
Ireton. | it being doubtful even then whether the charges 

During the whole of this war, the people, to brought against him amounted to treason, the 
whom it was very expensive and irksome, and odious old contrivance of the worst kings' was 
to whom it was made the more distressing by | resorted to, and a bill of attainder was brought 
almost every family being divided — some of its in against him. He was a violently prejudiced 



and mischievous person, had had' strong ear- 
cropping and nose-splittmg propensities, as you 
know; and had done a world of harm. But he 
died peaceably, and like a brave eld man. 

Fourth Part. 



members attaching themselves to one side, and 
some to the other — were over and over again 
most anxious for peace. So were some of the 
best men in each cause. Accordingly, treaties 
of peace were discussed between commissioners 
from the Parliament and the King; at York, at 
Oxford (where the King held a little Parliament 
of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came When the Parliament had got the King into 
to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all their hands, they became very anxious to get rid 
his difficulties, the King showed himself at his of their army, in which Oliver Cromwell had 
best. He was courageous, cool, self possessed, i begun to acquire great power; not only because 
and clever; but, the old taint of his character j of his courage and high abilities, but because 
was always in him, and he was never for one j he professed to be very sincere in the Scottish 
single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, I sort of Pnritan religion that was then exceed- 
the historian, one of his highest admirers, sup- | ingly popular among the soldiers. They were 
poses that he had unhappily promised the i as much opposed to the Bishops as to the Pope 
Queen never to make peace without her consent, himself; and the very privates, drummers, and 
and that this must often be taken as his excuse, trumpeters had such an inconvenient habit of 
He never kept his word from night to morning. I starting up and preaching long-winded dis- 
He signed a cessation of hostilities with the J courses, that I would not have belonged to that 
blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of money, j army on any account. 

and invited the Irish regiments over to help him So, the Parliament, being far from sure but 
against the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby ! that the army might begin to preach and fi°\ht 
his cabinet was seized, and was found tu con- ; against them, now it had nothing elsctodo, pro 
tain a correspondence with the Queen, in which posed to disband the greater part of it, to' send 
he expressly told her that he had deceived the another part to serve in Ireland against the reb- 
Parliameut— a mongrel Parliament, he called it els, and to keep only a small force in England, 
now, as an improvement on his old term of vi- But, the army would not consent to be broken 
pers— in pretending to recognize it and to treat | up, except upon its own conditions; and, when 
with it; and from which it further appeared | the Parliament showed an intention of compel- 
that he had long been in secret treaty with the j ling it, it acted for itself in an unexpected man- 
Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten ner. A certain cornet, of the name of J oice, ar 
thousand men. Disappointed in this, he sent a ! rived at Holmby House one night, attended' by 
roost devoted friend of his, the Earl of Glamor- | four hundred horsemen, went into the King's 
gan, to Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with I room with his hat in one hand and a pistol in 



the Catholic powers, to send him an Irish army 
of ten thousand men; in return for which he 
was to bestow great favors on the Catholic re- 
ligion. And, when this treaty was discovered in 
the carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who 
was killed in one of the many skirmishes of 
iiiose days, he basely denied and deserted his 
attached friend, the Earl, on his being charged 
with high treason; and — even worse than this — . 
had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave 
Mac with his own kingly hands, expressly that 
Vie might thus save himself. 

At last, on the twenty- seventh day of April, 
one thousand six hundred and forty-six, the 
Kmg 'found himself in the city of Oxford so 
surrounded by the Parliamentary ariny, who 
were closing in upon him on all sides, that he 
felt that if he would escape he must delay no 
loEger. So, that- night, having altered the cut 
of ais faair and beard, he was dressed up as a 
servant, and put, upon a horse with a cloak 
strapped behind him, and rode out of the town 
behind one of his own faithful followers,, with a 
clergyman of that country, who knew the road 
well, for a guide. He rode toward London as 
far as Harrow, and then altered his plans, and 
resolved, it would seem, to go to the Scottish 
camp. The Scottish men had been invited over 
to help the Parliamentary army, and had a large 
force then in England. Th^ King was so des- 
perately intriguing in everything he did, that it is 
doubtful what he exactly meant by this step. 
He tooii it anyhow, and delivered himself up to 
the Earl of Leven, the Scottish general-in-chief, 
who treated him as an honorable prisoner. 
Negotiations between the Parliament on the one 
hand, and the Scottish authorities on the other, 
as to what should be done with him, lasted 
until the following February. Then, when the' 
King had refused to the Parliament the conces- 
sion of that old militia point for twenty years, 
and had refused to Scotland the recognition of 
its Solemn League and Covenant, Scotland got 
a handsome sum for its army and its help, and 
the King into the bargain. He was taken, by 
certain Parliamentary commissioners appointed 
to receive him, to one of his own houses, called 
Holmby House, near Althorpe, in Northamp- 
tonshire. 

While the civil war was still in progress John 
Pym died, and was buried with great honor in 
Westminster Abbey — not with greater honor 
than he deserved, for the liberties of English- 
men owe a mighty debt to Pym and Hampden. 
The war was but newly over when the Earl of 
Essex died, of an illness brought on by his hav- 
ing overheated himself in a stag hunt in Wind- 
sor Forest. He, too, was buried in W estmins- 
ter Abbey with great state. I wish it were not 
necessary to add that Archbishop Laud died 



told the King that he had come 
away. The King was willing 



the other, and 
to take him 

enough to go, and only stipulatedthat he should 
be publicly required to do so next morning. 
Next morning, accordingly, he appeared on the 
top of the steps of the house, and asked Cornet 
Joice, before his men and the guard set there by 
the Parliament, what authority he had for tak- 
ing him away? To this Cornet Joice replied, 
"The authority of the army." "Havey 0U a 
written commission?" said the King. Joice, 
pointing to his four hundred men on horseback, 
replied, "That is my commission. " "Well," 
said the King, smiling, as if he were pleased, 
" 1 never before read such a commission; but it 
is written in fair and legible characters. This 
is a company of as handsome proper gentlemen 
as I have seen in a long while." He was asked 
where he would like to live, and he said at New- 
market. So, to Newmarket he and Cornet 
Joice and the four hundred horsemen rode; the 
King remarking, in the same smiling way, that 
he could ride as far at a spell as Cornet Joice, 
or any man there. 

The King quite believed, I think, that the 
army were his friends. He said as much to 
Fairfax when that general, Oliver Cromwell,, 
and Ireton went to persuade him to return to the 
custody of the Parliament. He preferred to re- 
main as he was, and resolved to remain as he 
was. And, when the army moved nearer and 
nearer London to frighten the Parliament into 
yielding to their demands, they took the King 
with them. It was a deplorable thing that Eng- 
land should be at the mercy of a great body of 
soldiers with arms in their hands; but the King- 
certainly favored them at this important time of 
his life, as compared with the more lawful 
power that tried to control him. It must be 
added, however, that they treated him, as yet, 
more respectfully and kindly than the Parlia- 
ment had done. They allowed him to be at- 
tended by his own servants, to be splendidly 
entertained at various houses, and to see his 
children — at Cavesham House, near Reading — 
for two days. Whereas, the Parliament had 
been rather hard with him, and had only allowed 
him to ride out and play at bowls. 

It is much to be believed that if the King 
could have been trusted, even at this time, he 
might have been saved. Even Oliver Cromwell 
expressly said that he did believe that no man 
could enjoy his possessions in peace, unless the 
King had his rights. He was not unfriendly 
toward the King; he had been present when he 
received his children, and had been much affect- 
ed by the pitiable nature of the scene; he saw 
the King often ; he frequently walked and talked 
with him in the long galleries and pleasant gar- 
dens of the palace at Hampton Court, whither 



upon the scaffold when the war was not yet he was now removed; and in all this risked 



something of his influence with the army. But 
the King was in secret hopes of help from the 
Scottish people; and, the moment he was en- 
couraged to join them, he began to be cool to his 
new friends, the army, and to tell the officers, 
that they could not possibly do without him 
At the very time, too, when he wa% promising 
to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen if they 
would help him up to his old height, he was 
writing to the Queen that he meant to hang 
them. They both afterward declared that they 
had been privately informed that such a letter 
would be found, on a certain evening, sewed up 
in a saddle which would be taken To the Blue 
Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover; and that 
they went there, disguised as common soldiersjB 
and sat drinking in the inn yard until a man 
came, with the saddle, which they ripped up 
with their knives, and therein found the letter. 
I see little reason to doubt the story. It is cer- 
tain that Oliver Cromwell told one of the King's, 
most faithful followers that the King could not 
be trusted, and that he would not be answerable 
if anything amiss were to happen to him. Still, 
even after that, he kept a promise he had made 
to the King, by letting him know that there was 
a plot with a certain portion of the army to. 
seize him. I believe that, in fact, he sincerely 
wanted the King to escape abroad, and so to ba 
got rid of without more trouble or danger. 
That Oliver himself had work enough with the 
army is pretty plain ; for some of the troops were 
so mutinous against him, and against those who 
acted with him at this time, that he found it 
necessary to have one man shot at the head of 
his regiment to overawe the rest. 

The King, when he received Oliver's warning, 
made his escape from Hampton Court: after 
some indecision and uncertainty, he went to 
Carisluooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight. At 
first he was pretty free there ; but, even there, 
he carried on a pretended treaty with the Parlia- 
ment, while he was really treating with commis- 
sioners from Scotland to send an army into Eng- 
land to take his part. When he broke off this, 
treaty with the Parliament (having settled with,' 
Scotland), and was treated as a prisoner, his 
treatment was not changed too soon, for he had 
plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent 
by the Queen, which was lying off the island. 

He was doomed to be disappointed in his 
hopes from Scotland. The agreement he had 
made with the Scottish commissioners was not 
favorable enough to the religion of that, country 
to please the Scottish clergy; and they preached 
against it. The consequence was, that the army 
raised in Scotland, and sent over, was too small 
to do much; and that, although it was helped by 
a rising of the Royalists in England and by 
good soldiers from Ireland, it could make no 
head against the Parliamentary army under such 
men as Cromwell and Fairfax. The King's 
eldest son, the Prince of Wales, came over from 
Holland with nineteen ships (a part of the En- 
glish fleet having gone over to him) to help his 
father; but nothing came of his voyage, and he 
was fain to return. The most remarkable event 
of this second civil war was the cruel execution 
by the Parliamentary General of Sir Charles 
Lucas and Sir George Lisle, two grand Royalist 
generals, who had bravely defended Colchester 
under every disadvantage of famine and dis- 
tress for nearly three months. When Sir 
Charles Lucas was shot, Sir George Lisle kissed 
his body, and said to the soldiers who were to- 
shoot him, "Come nearer, and make sure of 
me." " I warrant you, Sir George," said one 
of the soldiers, " we shall hit j'ou." "Ay?" he 
returned with a smile; " but 1 have been nearer 
to you, my friends, many a time, and you have 
missed me." 

The Parliament, after being fearfully bullied 
by the army- — who demanded to have seven 
members whom they disliked given up to them 
—had voted that they would have nothing more 
to do with the King. On the conclusion, how- 
ever, of this second civil war,(which did not last- 
more than six months), they appointed commis- 
sioners to treat with him. The King, then so- 
far released again as to be allowed to live in a 
private house at Newport, in the Isle of Wigiit, 
managed his own part of the negotiation with a 
sense that was admired by all who saw him, and 
gave up, in the end, all that was asked of him — 
even yielding (which he had steadily refused, so 
far) to the, temporary abolition of the bishops, 
and the transfer of their church land to the 
Crown. Still, With his old fatal vice upon him, 
when his best friends joined the commissioners 
in beseeching him to yield all those points as the 
only means of saving himself from the army, he 
was plotting to escape from the island; he was 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF EJN'Ix1.a:ND. 



61 



• holding correspondence with Lis friends aud the 
Catholics in Ireland, though declaring that he 
■was not; and he was writing, with his own 
hand, that in what he yielded he meant nothing 
but to get, time to escape. 

Matters were at this pass when the army, re- 
solved to defy the Parliament, marched iip to 
London. The Parliament, not afraid of them 
now, aud boldly led by Hollis, voted that the 
King's concessions were sufficient ground for 
settling the peace of the kingdom. Upon that, 
Colonel Rich and Colonel Pride went down to 
the House of Commons with a regiment of horse 
soldiers and a regiment of foot; and Colonel 
Pride, standing in the lobby with a list of the 
members who were obnoxious to the army in his 
hand, had them pointed out to him as they 
came through, and took them all into custody. 
This proceeding was afterward called by the 
people, for a joke, Pride's Purge. Cromwell 
was in the North, at the head of his men, at the 
time, but, when he came home, approved of 
what had been done. 

What with imprisoning some member's and 
causing others to stay away, the army had now 
reduced the House of Commons to some fifty or 
so. These soon voted that it was treason in a 
King to make war against his Parliament and 
his "people, and sent an ordinance up to the 
House of Lords for the King's beiug tried as a 
traitor. The House of Lords then sixteen in 
number, to a man rejected it. Thereupou. the 
Commons made an ordinance of their own, that 
they were the supreme government of the coun- 
try, and would bring the King to trial. 

The King had been taken for security to a 
place called Hurst Castle: a lonely house on a 
rock in the sea, connected with the coast of 
Hampshire by a rough road two miles long at 
low water. Thence he was ordered to be re- 
moved to Windsor; theuce, after being hut 
rudely used there, and having none but soldiers 
to wait upon him at table, he was brought up to 
St James's Palace in London, and told that his 
trial was appointed for next day. 

On Saturday, the twentieth of January, one 
thousand six hundred and forty-nine, this 
memorable trial began. The House of Com- 
mons had settled that one hundred and thirty- 
is should form the Court, and these 
v 1 1 taken from the House itself, from among 
the officers of the army, and from among the 
la wyers and citizens. John Bradshaw, sergeant- 
ttt-law, was appointed President. The place was 
Westminster Hall. At the upper end, in a red 
velvet chair, sat the President, with his hat 
(lined with plates of iron for his protection) on 
his head. The rest of the Court sat on side- j 
benches, also wearing their hats. The King's 
%eat was covered with velvet, like that of the 
President, and was opposite to it. He was 
brought from St. James's to Whitehall, and 
from Whitehall he came by water to his trial. 

When he came in, he looked round very 
steadily on the Court, and on the great number 
of spectators, aud then sat down: presently he 
got up and looked round again. On the indict- 
ment " against Charles'" Stuart, for high 
treason," being read, he smiled several times, , 
and he denied the authority of the Court, say- 
ing I hat there could be no Parliament without' a 
House of Lords, and that he saw no House of 
Lords there. Also, that the King ought to 
be there, and that he saw no King in the 
King's right place. Bradshaw replied that the 
was satisfied with its authority, and that 
its authority was Gpd.'s authority and the king- 
dom's. He then adjourned the Court to the 
following Monday. On that day the trial was 
resujied, and went on all the week. When the 
Saturday came, as the King passed forward to 
his place in the Hall, some soldiers and others 
cried for "justice!" and execution on him. 
That day, too, Bradshaw, like an angry Sultan, 
wove a red robe, instead of the black' robe he 
had worn before. The King was sentenced to 
death that day. As he went out, one solitary 
soldier said. " God bless you, sir i" Forthishis 
officer struck him. The King said he thought 
the punishment exceeded the offense. The 
silver head of his walking stick had fallen off 
while he leaned upon it, at one time of the trial. 
The accident seemed to disturb him, as if he 
thought it ominous of the falling of his own 
head; and he admitted as much, now it was all 
over. 

Being taken back to Whitehall, he sent to the 
Hou«e'of Conjmons, saying that, as the time of 
his execution might be nigh, he wished he might 
be allowed to see his darling children. It was 
granted. On the Monday he was taken back to 
St. James's; and his two children then in Eng- 



land, the Princess Elizabeth, thirteen years old, 
and the Duke of Gloucester, nine years old, 
were brought to take leave of him, from Sion 
House, near Brentford. It was a sad and touch- 
ing scene, when he kissed and fondled those 
poor children, and made a little present, of two 
diamond seals to the Princess, and gave them 
tender messages to their mother (who little de- 
served them, for she had a lover of her own 
whom she married soon afterward), and told 
them that he died " for the laws and liberties of 
the land." 1 am bound to say that I don't 
think he did, but I dare say he believed so. 

There were embassadors from Holland that 
day to intercede for the unhappy King, whom 
you and I both wish the Parliament had spared; 
but they got no answer. The Scottish commis- 
sioners interceded too; so did the Prince of 
! Wales, by a letter in which he offered, as the 
next heir to the throne, to accept any conditions 
' from the Parliament; so did the Queen, by let- 
ter likewise. Notwithstanding all, the warrant 
! for the execution was this day signed. There 
I is a story that, as Oliver Cromwell went to the 
j table with the pen in his hand to put his signa- 
ture to it, he drew his pen across the face of one 
: of the commissioners, who was standing near, 
and marked it with ink. That commissioner 
had not signed his own name yet, and the story 
adds that, when he came to do it, he marked 
Cromwell's face with ink in the same way. 

The King slept well, untroubled by the knowl- 
edge that it was his last night on earth, and rose 
on the thirtieth of January, two hours before 
| day, and dressed himself carefully. He put on 
! two shirts, lest he should tremble with the cold, 
and had his hair very carefully combed. The 
warrant had been directed to three officers of 
I be army. Colonel Hacker, Colonel Funks, and 
Colonel Pkayer. At ten o'clock the first of 
these came to the door, and said it was time to 
go to Whitehall. The King, who had always 
been a quick walker, walked at his usual speed 
through the Park, and called out to the guard, 
with his accustomed voice of command, " March 
on apace!" When he came to Whitehall, he 
was taken to his own bedroom, where a break- 
fast was set forth. As he had taken the Sacra- 
ment, he would eat nothing more; but, at about 
the time when the church bells struck twelve at 
noon (for he had to wait, through the scaffold 
not being ready), he took the advice of the good 
Bishop Juxon who was with him, and ate a 
little bread and drank a glass of claret. Soon 
after he had taken this refreshment, Colonel 
Hacker came to the chamber with the warrant 
in his hand, and called for Charles Stuart. 

And then, through the long gallery of White- 
hall Palace, which lie had often seen light and 
gay and merry and crowded in very different 
times, the fallen King passed along, until he 
came to the center window of the Banqueting 
House, through which he emerged upon the 
scaffold, which was hung with black. He 
looked at the two executioners, who were 
dressed in black, and masked; he looked at the 
troops of soldiers on horseback aud on foot, and 
all looked up at him in silence; he looked at the 
vast array of spectators, filling up the view be- 
yond, and turning all their faces upon him; he 
looked at his old Palace of St. James's; and he 
looked at the block. He seemed a little 
troubled to find that it was so low, and asked 
" if there were no place higher?" Then, to 
those, upon the scaffold, he sard " that it was the 
Parliament who had begun the war, and not he; 
but he hoped they might be guiltless too, as ill 
instruments had gone between them. In one 
respect," he said,"" he suffered justly; and that 
was because he had permitted an unjust sen- 
tence to be executed on another." In this he 
referred to the Earl of Strafford. 

He was not at all afraid to die; but he was 
anxious to die easily. When some one touched 
the ax while he was speaking, he broke off and 
called out, " Take heed of the ax! take heed of 
the ax!" He also said to Colonel Hacker, 
" Take care that they do not put me to pain." 
He told the executioner, " I shall say but very 
short prayers, and then thrust out my hands " — 
as the sign to strike. 

He put his hair up, under a white satin cap 
which the Bishop had /carried, and said. " I 
have a good cause and a gracious God on my 
side." The Bishop (old him that he had but 
one stage more to travel in this weary world, 
aud that, though it was a turbulent and trouble- 
some stage, it was a short one, and would carry 
him a great way — all the way from earth to 
Heaven. The King's last word, as be gave his 
cloak and the George — the decoration from his 
breast — to the Bishop, was " Remember!" He 



then kneeled down, laid his head on the block, 
spread out his hands, and was instantly killed. 
One universal groan broke from the crowd; 
and the soldiers, who had sat ou their horses aud 
stood in their ranks immovable as statues, were 
of a sudden all in motion, clearing the streets 

Thus, in the forty-ninth year of his age, fall- 
ing at the same lime of his career as Strafford 
had fallen in his, perished Charles the First. 
With all my sorrow for him, I cannot airree 
with him that he died " the martyr of the 
people;" for the people had been martyrs to 
him, and to his ideas of a King's rights, long be- 
fore. Indeed, I am afraid that he was but a 
bad judge of martyrs; for he had called that in- 
famous Duke of Buckingham " the Martyr of 
his Sovereign." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

ENGLAND UNDER OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Before sunset on the memorable day on 
which King Charles the First was executed, the 
House of Commons passed an Act declaring it 
treason in any one to proclaim the Prince of 
Wales — or anybody else — King of England. 
Soon afterward, it declared that the House 
of Lords was useless and dangerous, and ought 
to be abolished; and directed that the late King's 
statue should be taken down from the Royal 
Exchange in the City and other public places. 
Having laid hold of some famous Royalists who 
had escaped from prison, and having beheaded 
the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Holland, and Lord 
Capel in Palace Yard (all of whom died very 
courageously), they then appointed a Council of 
State to govern the country. It consisted of 
forty one members, of whom five were peers. 
Bradshaw was made President. The House of 
Commons also readmitted members who had 
opposed the King's death, and made up its num- 
bers to about a hundred and fifty. 

But, it still had an army of more than forty 
thousand men to deal with, and a very hard task 
it was to manage them. Before the King's exe- 
cution, the army had appointed some of its offi- 
cers to remonstrate between tbem and the Parlia 
ment; and now the common soldiers began to 
take that office upon themselves. The regiments 
under orders for Ireland mutinied; one troop 
of horse in the city of London seized their own 
flag, and refused to obey orders. For this the 
ringleader was shot: which did not mend the 
matter, for, both his comrades and the people 
made a public funeral for him, and accompanied 
the body to the grave with sound of trum iets, 
and with a gloomy procession of persons carry 
ing bundles of rosemary steeped in blood. Oliver 
was the only man to deal with such difficulties 
as these, and he soon cut them short by bin si - 
ing at midnight into the town of Burford, near 
Salisbury, where the mutineers were sheltered, 
taking four hundred of them prisoners, and 
shooting a number of them by sentence of court- 
martial. The soldiers soon found, as all a 
did, that Oliver was not a man to be trifled with. 
And there was an end of the mutiny. 

The Scottish Parliament did not know Oliver 
yet; so, on hearing of the King's execution, it 
proclaimed the Prince of Wales King Charles 
the Second, on condition of his respecting tin 
emn League and Covenant. Charles \\ as alio iad 
at that time, and so was Montrose, from whose 
help he had hopes enough to keep him holding 
on and off with commissioners from Scotland, 
just as his father might have done. These hopes 
were soon at an end ; for Montrose, having raised 
a few hundred exiles in Germany, and I 
with them in Scotland, found that the pi 
there, instead of joining him, deserted the c 
try at his approach. He was soon taken prisoner 
and carried to Edinburgh. There he was re- 
ceived with every' possible insult, and carried 
to prison in a cart, his officers going two and two 
before him. He was sentenced by I be Parlia- 
ment to be hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, 
to have his head set on a spike in Edinburgh, 
and his limbs distributed in other places, ac- 
cording to the old barbarous manner. He said 
he had always acted under the Royal orders, and 
only wished he had limbs enough to be distrib- 
uted through Christendom, that it might be the 
more widely known how loyal he had been. He 
went to the scaffold in a bright and brilljantdress, 
and made a bold end at thirty-eight years of age. 
The breath was scarcely out of his body when 
Charles abandoned his memory, and denied that 
he had ever given him orders to rise in his be- 
half. Oh, the family failing was strong in that 
Charles thenl 



62 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



Oliver had been appointed by the Parliament 
to command the army in Ireland, where he took 
a terrible vengeance for the sanguinary rebellion, 
and made tremendous havoc, particularly in the 
siege of Drogheda, where no quarter was given, 
and where he found at least a thousand of the 
inhabitants shut up together in the great church: 
every one of whom was killed by his soldiers, 
usually known as Oliver's Ironsides. There 
were numbers of friars and priests among them, 
and Oliver gruffly wrote home in his dispatch 
that these were " knocked on the head " like the 
rest. 

But Charles having got over to Scotland, 
where the men of the Solemn League and Cove- 
nant, led him a prodigiously dull life, and made 
him very weary with long sermons and grim 
Sundays, the Parliament called the redoubtable 
Oliver home to knock the Scottish men on the 
head for setting up that Prince. Oliver left his 
son-in-law, Ireton, as general in Ireland in his 
stead (he died there afterward), and he imitated 
the example of his father-in- law with such good 
will that he brought the country to subjection, 
and laid it at the feet of the Parliament. In the 
end they passed an Act for the settlement of Ire- 
land, generally pardoning all the common peo- 
ple, but exempting from this grace such of the 
wealthier sort as had been concerned in the re- 
bellion, or in any killing of Protestants, or who 
refused to lay down their arms. Great numbers 
of Irish were got out of the country to serve 
under Catholic powers abroad, and a quantity 
of land was declared to have been forfeited by 
past offenses, and was given to people who had 
lent money to the Parliament early Ln the war. 
These were sweeping measures; but, if Oliver 
Cromwell had had his own way fully, and had 
stayed in Ireland, he would have done more yet. 

However, as I have said, the Parliament 
wanted Oliver for Scotland; so, home Oliver 
came, and was made Commander of all the 
Forces of the Commonwealth of England, and 
in three days away he went with sixteen thousand 
soldiers to fight the Scotlish men. Now, the Scot- 
tish men, being then — as you will generally find 
them now— mighty cautious, reflected that the 
troops they had were not used to war like the 
Ironsides, and would be beaten in an open fight. 
Therefore they said, "If we lie quiet in our 
trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the farm- 
ers come into the town and desert the country, 
the Ironsides will be driven out by iron hun- 
ger, and be forced to go away." This was, no 
doubt, the wisest plan; but, as the Scottish 
clergy would interfere with what they knew 
nothing about, and would perpetually preach 
long sermons exhorting the soldiers to come out 
and fight, the soldiers got it in their heads that 
they absolutely must come out and fight. Ac- 
cordingly, in an evil hour for themselves, they 
came out of their safe position. Oliver fell upon 
them instantly, and killed three thousand, and 
took ten thousand prisoners. 

To gratify the Scottish Parliament, and pie- 
serve their favor, Charles had signed a declara- 
tion they laid before him, reproaching the mem- 
ory of his father and mother, and representing 
himself as a most religious Prince, to whom the 
Solemn League and Covenant was as dear as life. 
He meant no sort of truth in this, and soon after- 
ward galloped away on horseback to join some 
tiresome Highland friends, who were always 
flourishing dirks and broadswords. He was 
overtaken, and induced to return ; but this at- 
tempt, which was called " The Start," did him 
so much service, that they did not 'preach quite 
such long sermons at him afterward as they had 
done before. 

On the first of January, one thousand six hun- 
dred and fifty-one, the Scottish people crowned 
him at Scone. He immediately took the chief 
command of an army of twenty thousand men, 
and marched to Stirling. Hisjhopes were height- 
ened, Idare say, by the redoubtable Oliver being 
ill of an ague; but Oliver scrambled out of bed 
in no time, and went to work with such energy 
that he got behind the Royalist army, and cut it 
off from all communication with Scotland- 
There was nothing for it then but to go on to 
England ; so it went on as far as Worcester, where 
the mayor and some of the gentry proclaimed 
King Charles the Second straightway. His 
proclamation, however, was of little use to him, 
for very few Royalists appeared; and, on the 
very same day, two people were publicly be- 
headed on Tower Hill for espousing his cause. 
Up came Oliver to Worcester too, at double- 
quick speed, and he and his Ironsides so laid 
about them in the great battle which was fought 
there, that they completely beat the Scottish 
men, and destroyed the Royalist army; though 



the Scottish men fought so gallantly that it took 
five hours to do. 

The escape of Charles after this battle of 
Worcester did him good service long afterward, 
for it induced many of the generous English 
people to take a romantic interest in him, and to 
think much better of him than he ever deserved. 
He fled in the night, with not more than sixty 
followers, to the house of a Catholic lady in 
Staffordshire. There, for his greater safety, the 
whole sixty left him. He cropped his hair, 
stained his face and hands brown as if they were 
i sunburnt, put on the clothes of a laboring coun- 
tryman, and went out in the morning with his 
ax in his hand, accompanied by four wood- 
cutters who were brolhers, and another man 
who was their brother-in-law. These good fel- 
lows made a bed for him under a tree, as the 
weather was very bad; and the wife of one of 
them brought him food to eat ; and the old moth- 
er of the four brothers came and fell down on 
her knees before him in the wood, and thanked 
God that her sons were engaged in saving his 
life. At night he came out of the forest, and 
went on to another house which was near the 
river Severn, with the intention of passing into 
Wales; but the place swarmed with soldiers, and 
the bridges were guarded, and all the boats were 
made fast. So, after lying in a hayloft covered 
over with hay for some time, he came out of his 
place, attended by Colonel Careless, a Catholic 
gentleman who had met him there, and with 
whom he lay hid, all the next day, up in the 
shady branches of a fine old oak. It was lucky 
for the King that it was September-time, and 
that the leaves had not begun to fall, since he 
and the Colonel, perched up in this tree, could 
catch glimpses of the soldiers riding about below, 
and could hear the crash in the woods as they 
went about beating the boughs. 

After this he walked and walked until his 
feet were all blistered; and, having been con- 
cealed all one day in a house which was searched 
by the troopers while he was there, went with 
Lord Wilmot, another of his good friends, to a 
place called Bentley where one Miss Lane, a 
Protestant lady, had obtained a pass to be al- 
lowed to ride through the guards to see a rela- 
tion of hers near Bristol. Disguised as a serv- 
ant, he rode in.the saddle before this young lady 
to the house of Sir John Winter, while Lord 
Wilmot rode there boldly, like a plain country 
gentleman, with dogs at his heels. It happened 
that Sir John Winter's butler had been servant 
in Richmond Palace, and knew Charles the mo-' 
ment he set eyes upon him; but, the butler was 
faithful, and kept the secret. As no ship could 
be found to carry him abroad, it was planned 
that he should go — still traveling with Miss 
Lane as her servant — to another house at Trent, 
near Sherborne, in Dorsetshire; and then Miss 
Lane and her cousin, Mr. Lascelles, who had 
gone on horseback beside her all the way, went 
home. 1 hope Miss Lane was going to marry 
that cousin, for I am sure she must have been a 
brave kind girl. If I had been that cousin, I 
should certainly have loved Miss Lane. 

When Charles, lonely for the loss of Miss Lane, 
was safe at Trent, a ship was hired at Lyme, the 
master of which engaged to take two gentlemen 
to France, ln the evening of the same day, the 
King — now riding as servant before another 
young lady — set off for a public house at a place 
called Charmouth, where the captain of the 
vessel was to take him on board. But the cap- 
tain's wife, being afraid of her husband getting 
into trouble, locked him up, and would not let 
him sail. Then they went away to Bridport; 
and, coming to the inn there, found the stable- 
yard full of soldiers who were on the lookout 
for Charles, and who talked about him while 
they drank. He had such presence of mind, that 
he led the horses of his party through the yard 
as any other servant might have done, and said, 
" Come out of the way, you soldiers; let us 
havejrdom to pass here!" As he went along he 
met a half-tipsy hostler, who rubbed his eyes 
and said to him, " Why, I was formerly servant 
to Mr. Potter at Exeter, and surely I have some- 
times seen you there, young man V ' He certainly 
had, for Charles had lodged there. His ready 
answer was, "Ah! I did live with him once; 
but I have no time to talk now. We'll have a 
pot of beer together when I come back." 

From this dangerous place he returned to 
Trent, and lay there concealed several days. 
Then he escaped to Heale, near Salisbury; 
where, in the house of a widow lady, he was 
hidden five days, until* the master of a collier 
lying off Shoreham, in Sussex, undertook to 
convey a" gentleman " to France. On thenight 
of the fifteenth of October, accompanied by 



two colonels and a merchant, the King rode to 
Brighton, then a little fishing village, to give the 
captain of flu. ship a supper before going on 
board; but, so many people knew him, that this 
captain knew him too, and not onlv he, but the 
landlord and landlady also. Before he went 
away, the landlord came behind his chair, 
kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to be 
a lord, and to see his wife a lady; at which 
Charles laughed. 1 hey had a good supper by 
this time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, 
at which the King was a first- rate hand; so, the 
captain assured him that he would stand by him, 
and he did. It was agreed that the captain 
should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles 
should address the sailors, and say he was a 
gentleman in debt who was running away from 
his creditors, and that he hoped they would join 
him in persuading the captain to put him ashore 
in France. As the King acted his part very 
well indeed, and gave the sailors twenty shillings 
to drink, they begged the captain to do what 
such a worthy gentleman asked. He pi'eteDded 
to yield to their entreaties, and the King got 
safe to Normandy. 

Ireland being now subdued, and Scotland 
kept quiet by plenty of forts and soldiers put 
there by Oliver, the Parliament would have gone ' 
on quietly enough, as far as fighting with any 
foreign enemy went, but for getting into trouble 
with the Dutch, who, in the spring of the year 
one thousand six hundred and fifty-one, sent a 
fleet into the Downs under their Admiral Van 
Tromp, to call upon the bold English Admiral 
Blake (who was there with half as many ships 
as the Dutch) to strike his flag. Blake fired a 
raging broadside instead, and beat off Van 
Tromp; who, in the aulumn. came back again 
with seventy ships, and challenged the bold 
Blake — who still was only half as strong — to 
fight him. Blake fought him all day; but, find- 
ing that the Dutch were too many for him, got 
quietly off at night. What does Van "Tromp 
upon this, but goes cruising and boasting about 
the Channel, between the North Foreland and 
the Isle of Wight, with a great Dutch broom 
tied to his masthead, as a sign that he could and 
would sweep the English off the sea! Wilhin 
three months Blake lowered his tone, though, 
and his broom too; for, he and two other bold 
commanders, Dean and Monk, fought him three 
whole days, took 1wenty-three of his ships, 
shivered his broom to pieces, and settled his 
business. 

Things were no sooner quiet again than the 
army began to complain to the Parliament that 
they were not governing the nation properly, 
and to hint that they thought they could do it 
better themselves. Oliver, who had now made- 
up his mind to be the head of the slate, or noth- 
ing at all, supported them in this, and called a 
meeting of officers and his own Parliamentary 
friends, at his lodgings in Whitehall, to consider 
the best way of getting rid of the Parliament. 
It had now lasted just as many years as the 
King's unbridled power had lasted, before it 
came into existence. The end of the delibera- 
tion was, that Oliver went down to the House in 
his usual plain black dress, with his usual gray 
worsted stockings, but with an unusual party of 
soldiers behind him. These last he left in the 
lobby, and then went in and sat down. Pres- 
ently he got up, made the Parliament a speech, 
told them that the Lord had done with them, 
stamped his foot and said, " You are no Parlia- 
ment. Bring them in! Bring them in!" At 
this signal the door flew open, and the soldiers 
appeared. " This is not honest, " said Sir Harry 
Vane, one of the members. " Sir Harry Vane!" 
cried Cromwell. " Oh, Sir Harry Vane! The 
Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" Then 
he pointed out members one by one, and said 
this man was a drunkard, and that man a 
dissipated fellow, and that man a liar, and so 
on. Then he caused the Speaker to be walked out 
of his chair, told the guard to clear the House, 
called the mace upon the table — which is a sign 
that the House is sitting—" a fool's bauble," and 
said, "Here, carry it away!" Being obeyed in 
all these orders, he quietly locked the door, put 1 
the key in his pocket, walked back to Whitehall' 
again, and told his friends, who were still assem- 
bled there, what he had done. 

They formed a new Council of State after 
this extraordinary proceeding, and got a new 
Parliament together in their own way: which 
Oliver himself opened in a sort of sermon and 
which he said was the beginning of a perfect 
heaven upon earth. In this Parliament there 
sat a well-known leather-seller, who had taken 
the singular name of Praise God Barebones, and 
from whom it was called, for a joke, Bare- 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 



63 



bones's Parliament, though its general name 
was the Little Parliament. As soon as it ap- 
peared that it was not going to put Oliver in the 
first place, it turned out to be not at all like the 
beginning of heaven upon earth, and Oliver said 
it really was not to be borne with. So he 
cleared off that Parliament in much the same 
way as he had disposed of the other; and then 
the council of officers decided that he must be 
made the supreme authority of the kingdom, 
under the title of the Lord Protector of the Com- 
monwealth. 

So on Ihe^ sixteenth of December, one tiiou- 
sand six hundred and fifty-three, a great proces- 
sion was formed at Oliver's door, and he came 
out in a black velvet suit, and a big pair of 
boots and got into his coach and went down to 
Westminster, attended by the judges, and the 
lord mayor, and the aldermen, and all the other 
great and wonderful personages of the country. 
There, in the Court of Chancery, he publicly 
accepted the office of Lord Protector. Then 
he was sworn, and the City sword was handed 
to him, and the seal was handed to him, and all 
the other things were handed to him which are 
usually handed to Kings and Queens on slate 
occasions. When Oliver had handed them all 
back, he was quite made and completely fin- 
ished off as Lord Protector; and several of the 
Ironsides preached about it at great length all 
the evening. 



Second Part. 

Oliver Cromwell — whom the people long 
called Old Noll— in accepting the office of Pro- 
tector, had bound himself by a certain paper 
which was handed to him, called " the Instru- 
ment," to summon a Parliament, consisting of 
between four and five hundred members, in the 
election of which neither the Royalists nor the 
Catholics were to have any share. He had also 
pledged himself that this Parliament should not 
be dissolved without its own consent until it had 
sat five months. 

When this Parliament met, Oliver made a 
speech to them of three hours long, very wisely 
advising them what to do for the credit and hap- 
piness of the country. To keep down the more 
violent members, he required them to sign a 
recognition of what they were forbidden by 
" the Instrument" to do; which was, chiefly, to 
take the power from one single person at the 
head of the state, or to command the army. 
Then he dismissed them to go to work. With 
bis usual vigor and resolution lie went to work 
himself with some frantic preachers — who were 
rather overdoing their sermons in calling him a 
villain and a "tyrant — by shutting up their 
chapels, and sending a few of them off to 
prison. 

There was not at that time, in England or 
anywhere else, a man so able to govern the 
country as Oliver Cromwell. Although he ruled 
with a strong hand, and levied a very heavy tax 
on Hie Royalists (but not until they had plotted 
against his life), he ruled wisely, and as the times 
required. He caused England to be so re- 
spected abroad, that I wish some lords and gen- 
tlemen who have governed it under kings and 
queens in later days would have taken a leaf 
out of Oliver Cromwell's book. He sent bold 
Admiral Blake to the Mediterranean Sea, to 
make the Duke of Tuscany pay sixty thousand 
pounds for injuries he had done to British sub- 
jects, and spoliation he had committed on En- 
glish merchants. He further dispatched him 
and his fleet to Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, to 
have every English ship and every English man 
delivered up to him that had been taken by 
pirates in those parts. All this was gloriously 
done; and it began to be thoroughly well 
known, all over the world, that England was 
governed by a man in earnest, who would not 
allow the English name to be insulted or slight- 
ed anywhere. 

These were not all his foreign triumphs. He 
sent a fleet to sea against the Dutch ; and the 
two powers, each with one hundred ships upon 
Its side, met in the English Channel off the 
North Foreland, where the fight lasted all day 
long. Dean was killed in this fight; but Monk, 
who commanded in the same ship with him, 
threw his cloak over his body, that the sailors 
might not know of his death, and be disheart- 
ened. Nor were they. The English broadsides 
so exceedingly astonished the Dutch that they 
sheered off at last, though the redoubtable Van 
Tromp fired upon them with his own guns for 
deserting their flag. Soon afterward the two 
fleets engaged again, off the coast of Holland. 



There, the valiant Van Tromp was shot through 
the heart, and the Dutch gave in, and peace was 
made. 

Further than this, Oliver resolved not to bear 
the domineering and bigoted conduct of Spain, 
which country not only claimed a right to all 
the gold anil silver that could be found in South 
America, and treated the ships of all other 
countries who visited those regions as pirates, 
but put English subjects into the horrible Span- 
ish prisons of the Inquisition. So, Oliver told 
the Spanish embassador that English ships must 
be free to go wherever they would, and that En- 
glish merchants must not be thrown into those 
same dungeons, no, not for the pleasure of all 
the priestsln Spain. To this the Spanish em- 
bassador replied that the gold and silver coun- 
try, and the Holy Inquisition, were his King's 
two eyes, neither of which he could submit to 
have put out. Very well, said Oliver, than he 
was afraid he (Oliver) must damage those two 
eyes directly. 

So, another fleet was dispatched under two 
commanders, Penn and Venables, for His- 
pSniola; where, however, the Spaniards got the 
better of the fight. Consequently, the fleet 
came home again, after taking Jamaica on the 
way. , Oliver, indignant with the two com- 
manders, who had not done what bold Admiral 
Blake would have done, clapped them into 
prison, declared war against Spain, and made a 
treaty with France, in virtue of which it was to 
shelter the King and his brother the Duke of 
York no longer. Then, he sent a fleet abroad 
under bold Admiral Blake, which brought the 
King of Portugal to his senses— just to keep its 
hand in— and then engaged a Spanish fleet, sunk 
four great ships, and took two more, laden with 
silver" to the value of two millions of pounds: 
which dazzling prize was brought from Ports- 
mouth to Loudon in wagons, with the populace 
of all the towns and villages through which the 
wagons passed shouting with all their might. 
After this victory, bold Admiral Blake sailed 
away to the port of Sante Oruz, to cut oft the 
Spanish treasure-ships coming from Mexico. 
There he found them, ten in number, with seven 
others to take care of them, and a big castle, 
and seven batteries, all roaring and blazing away 
at him with great guns. Blake cared no more 
for great guns than for pop-guns — no more for 
their hot iron balls than for snowballs. He 
dashed into the harbor, captured and burnt 
every one of the ships, and came sailing out 
again triumphantly, with the victorious English 
flag flying at his masthead. This was the last 
triumph of this great commander, who had 
sailed and fought until he was quite worn nut. 
He died as his successful ship was nmii into 
Plymouth Harbor amidst the joyful acclama- 
tions of the people, and was bulled iu state in 
Westminster Abbey. Not to lie there long. 

Over and above" all this, Oliver found that 
the Vaudois, or Protestant people of the valleys 
of Lucerne, were insolently treated by the 
Catholic powers, and were even put to death for 
their religion in an audacious and bloody man- 
ner. Instantly he informed those powers that 
this was a thing which Protestant England 
would not allow; and he speedily carried his 
point, through the might of his great name, and 
established their right to worship God in peace 
after their own harmless manner. 

Lastly, his English army won such admira- 
tion in fighting with the French against the 
Spaniards, that, after they had assaulted the 
town of Dunkirk togelher, the French King in 
person gave it up to the English, that it might 
be a token to them of their might and valor. 

There were plots enough against Oliver among 
the frantic religionisls (who called themselves 
Fifth Monarchy Men), and anlong the disap- 
pointed Republicans. He had a difficult game 
to play, for the Royalists were always readv to 
side with either party against him. The " King 
over the water," too, as Charles was called, had 
no scruples about plotting with any one against 
his life : although there is reason to suppose that 
he would willingly have married one of his 
daughters, if Oliver would have had such a son- 
in-law. There was a certain Colonel Saxby of 
the army, once a great supporter of Oliver's, but 
now turned against him, who was a grievous 
trouble to him through all this part of his 
career; and who came and went between the 
discontented in England and Spain, and Charles, 
who put himself m alliance with Spain on being 
thrown off by France. This man died in prison 
at last; but not until there had been very seri- 
ous plots between the Royalists and Republi- 
cans, and an actual rising of them in England, 
when they burst into the city of Salisbury on a 



Sunday night, seized the judges who were going 
to hold the assizes there next day, and would 
have hanged them, but for the merciful objec- 
tions of the more temperate of their number. 
Oliver was s.o vigorous and shrewd that he soon 
put this revolt down, as he did most other con- 
spiracies; and it was well for one of its chief 
managers — that same Lord Wilmot who had as- 
sisted in Charles's flight, and was now Earl of 
Rochester— that he made his escape. Oliver 
seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere, and 
secured such sources of information as his ene- 
mies little dreamed of. There was a chosen 
body of six persons, called the Sealed Knot, 
who were in the closest and most secret confi- 
dence of Charles. One of the foremost of these 
very men, a Sir Richard Willis, reported to Oli- 
ver everything that passed among them, and 
had two hundred a year for it. 

Miles Syndarcomb, also of the old army, was 
another conspirator against the Protector. He 
and a man named Cecil bribed one of his Life 
Guards to let them have good notice when he 
was going out — intending to shoot him from a 
window. But, owing either to his caution or 
his good fortune, they could never get an aim 
at him. Disappointed in this design, they got 
into the chapel m Whitehall, with a basketful 
of combustibles, which were to explode by 
means of a slow match in six hours; then, in 
the noise and confusion of the fire, they hoped 
to kill Oliver. But, the Life Guardsman him- 
self disclosed this plot; and the}' were seized, 
and Miles died (or killed himself in prison) a 
little while before he was ordered for execution. 
A few such plotters Oliver caused to be behead- 
ed, a few more to be hanged, and many more, 
including those who rose in arms against him, 
to be sent as slaves to the West Indies. If he 
were rigid, he was impartial too, in asserting 
the laws of England. When a Portuguese 
nobleman; the brother of the Portuguese em- 
bassador, killed a London citizen in mistake for 
another man with whom he had had a quarrel, 
Oliver caused him to be tried before a jury of 
Eglishmen and foreigners, and had him exe- 
cuted in spite of the entreaties of all the em- 
bassadors in London. 

One of Oliver's own friends, the Duke of Olden- 
burgh, in sending him a present oisix line coach- 
horses, was very near doing more to please the 
Royalists than all the plotters put together. 
One day Oliver went with his coach, drawn 
by these six horses, into Hyde Park, to dine 
with his secretary and some of his other gen- 
tlemen under the trees there. After dinner, 
being merry, he took it into his head to put his 
friends inside, and to drive them home: a pos- 
tilion riding one of the foremost horses, as the 
custom was. On account of Oliver's being too 
free with the whip, the six fine horses went off 
at a gallop, the postilion got thrown, and Oliver 
fell upon the coach-pole, and narrowly escaped 
being shot by his own pistol, which got entan- 
gled with his clothes in the harness, and went 
off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, 
until his foot came" out of the shoe, and then he 
came safely to the ground under the broad body 
of the coach, and was very little the worse. The 
gentlemen inside were only bruised, and the dis- 
contented people of all parties were much disap 
pointed. 

The rest of the history of the Protecl orate of 
Oliver Cromwell is a history of his Parliaments. 
His first one not pleasing him at all, he wailed 
until the five months were out, and then dis- 
solved it. The next was better suited to his 
views; and from that he desired to get — if he 
could with safety to himself— the title of King. 
He had had this in his mind some time: whether 
because he thought that the English people, 
being more used to the title, were more likely 
to obey it; or whether because he really wished 
to be a king himself, and to leave the succes- 
sion to that title in his family, is far from clear. 
He was already as high, in England and in all 
the world, as lie would ever be, and I doubt if 
he cared for the mere name. However, a paper, 
called the " Humble Petition and Advice," was 
presented to him by the House of Commons, 
praying him to take a high title, and to appoint, 
his successor. That he would have taken the 
title of King there is no doubt, but for the strong- 
opposition of the army. This induced him to 
forbear, and to assent only to the other points of 
the petition. Upon which occasion there was 
another grand show in Westminster Hall, when 
the Speaker of the House of Commons formally 
invested him with a purple robe lined with 
ermine, and presented him with a splendidly 
bound Bible, and put a golden scepter in his 
band. The next time the Parliament met, t he 



64 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



-called a House of Lords of sixty members, as 
the petition gave liini power to do; but, as that 
Parliament did not please him either, and would 
not proceed to the business of the country, he 
jumped into a coach one morning, took six 
Guards with him, and sent them to the right- 
about. 1 wish this had been a warning to Par- j 
liaments to avoid long speeches, and do more 
■work. 

It was the month of August, one thousand six 
hundred and fifty-eight, when Oliver Crom- 1 
well's favorite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole j 
(who had lately lost her youngest son), lay very 
ill, and his mind was greatly troubled, because | 
he loved hei dearly. Another of his daughters 
was married to Lord Falconberg, another to the 
grandson of the Earl of Warwick, and he had 
made his son Richard one of the Members of 
the Upper House. He was very kind and lov- 
ing to them all, being a good father and a good 
husband ; but he loved this daughter the best of 
the family and went down to Hampton Court to 
see her, and could hardly be induced to stir 
from her sick-room until she died Although 
his religion had been of a gloomy kind, his dis- 
position had been always cheerful. He had 
been fond of music in his home, and had kept 
open table once a tveek for all officers of the 
army not below the rank of captain, and had 
always preserved in his house a quiet sensible 
dignity. He encouraged men of genius and 
learning, and loved to have them about him. 
Milton was one of his great friends. He was 
.go'od-huniored, too, with the nobility, whose 
dresses and manners were very different from 
his; and, to show them what good information 
he had, he would sometimes jokingly tell them, 
when they were his guests, where they had last 
drank the health of the " Kingovertbe water," 
and would recommend them to be more private 
(if they could) another time. But he had lived 
in busy times, had borne the weight of heavy 
state affairs, and had often gone m tear of his 
life. He was ill of the gout and ague; and, 
when the death of his beloved child came upon j 
him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head 
again. He told his physicians on the twenty- 
fourth of August that the Lord had assured him 
that he was not to die in that illness, and that 
he would certaiely get better. This was only 
his sick fancy, for on the third of September, 
which was the anniversary of the great battle 
of Worcester, and the day of the year which he 
called his fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth 
year of his age. He had been delirious, and 
had lain insensible some hours, but he had been 
overheard to murmur a very good prayer the 
■day before. The whole country lamented his 
death. If you want to know the real worth of 
Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his 
country, you can hardly do better than compare 
England under him, with England under Charles 
1he Second. 

He had appointed his sen Richard to succeed 
him, and 1 after there had been, at Somerset 
House in the Strand, a lying in state more splen- 
did than sensible — as all such vanities after death 
are, I think — Richard became Lord Protector. 
He was an amiable country gentleman, but had 
none of his father's great genius, and was quite 
nnflt for such a post in such a storm of parties. 
Richard's Protectorate, which only lasted a year 
and a half, is a history of quarrels between the 
officers of the army and the Parliament, and be- 
tween the officers among themselves; and of a 
growing discontent among the people, who had 
far too many long sermons and far too few 
amusements, and wanted a change. At last. 
General Monk got the army well into his own 
hands, and then, in pursuance of a secret plan 
he seems to have entertained from the time of 
Oliver's death, declared for the King's cause. 
He did not do this openly; but, in his place in 
the House of Commons, as one of the members 
for Devonshire, strongly advocated the pro- 
posals of one Sir John Greenville, who came to 
the House with a letter from Charles, dated 
from Breda, and with whom he had previously I 
heen in secret communication. There had been | 
plots and counterplots, and a recall of the last j 
members of the Long Parliament, and an end of 
the Long Parliament, and risings of the Royalists 
that were made too soon; and most men being- 
tired out, and there being no one to head the 
country now great Oliver was dead, it was 
readily, agreed to welcome Charles Stuart. 
Some of the wiser and better members said — 
what was most true — that in the letter from 
Breda he gave no real promise to govern well, 
and that it would be best to make him pledge 
himself beforehand as to what he should be 
bound to do for the benefit of the kingdom. 



Monk said, however, it would be all right when 
he came, and he could not come too soon. 

So, everybody found out all in a moment that 
the country must be prosperous and happy, hav- 
ing another Stuart to condescend to reign over 
it; and there was a prodigious firing off of guns, 
lighting of bonfires, ringing of bells, and throw- 
ing up of caps. The people drank the King's 
health by thousands in the open streets, and 
everybody rejoiced. Down came the Arms of 
the Commonwealth up went the Royal Arms 
instead, and out came the public money. Fifty 
thousand pounds for the King, ten thousand 
pounds for his brother the Duke of York, five 
thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of 
Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious Stuarts 
were put up in all the churches; commissioners 
were sent to Holland (which suddenly found out 
that Charles was a great man, and that it loved 
him) to invite the King home; Monk and the 
Kentish grandees went to Dover, to kneel 
down before him as he landed. He kissed and 
embraced Monk, made him ride in the coach 
with himself and his brothers, came on to Lon- 
don amid wonderful shoutings, and passed 
through the army at Blackheath on the twenty - 

' ninth of May (his birthday), in the year one 
thousand six hundred and sixty. Greeted by 

' splendid dinners under tents, by flags and 
tapestry streaming from all the houses, by de- 
lighted crowds in all the streets, by troops of 
noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, by City 
companies, train-bands, drummers, trumpeters, 
the great Lord Mayor, and the majestic Alder- 
men, the King went on to Whitehall. On en- 
tering it, he commemorated his Restoration with 
the joke that it really would seem to have been 
his own fault that he had not come long ago, 
since everybody told hi.-nlhat he had always 
wished for him with all his heart. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, 
CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH. 

There never were such profligate times m 
England as under Charles the Second.' When- 
ever you see his porti'ait, with his swarthy, ill- 
lookmg face and great nose, you may fancy him 
in his court at Whitehall, surrounded by some 
of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom 
(though they were lords and ladies), drinking, 
gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, 
and committing every kind of profligate excess. 
It has been a fashion to call Charles the Second 
"The Merry Monarch. ' ' Let me try to give 
you a general idea of some of the merry things 
that were done, in the merry days when this 
merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne in 
merry England. 

The first merry proceeding was — of course — to 
declare that he was one of the greatest, the 
wisest, and the noblest Kings that every shone, 
like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted 
earth. The next merry and- pleasant piece of 
business was, for the Parliament, in the hum- 
blest manner, to give him one millon two hun- 
dred thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon 
him for life that old disputed tonnage and pound- 
age which had been so bravely fought for. 
Then, General Monk, being made Earl of Albe- 
marle, and a few other Royalists similarly re- 
warded, the law went to work to see what was 
to be done to those persons (they were called 
Regicides) who had been concerned in making a 
martyr of the late King. Ten of these were 
merrily executed; that is to say, six of the 
judges, one 'of the Council, Colonel Hacker and 
another officer who had commanded the Guards, 
and Hugh Peters* a preacher who had preached 
against the martyr with all his heart. These ex 
ecutions were so extremely merry, that every 
horrible circumstance which Cromwell had 
abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. 
The hearts of the sufferers were torn out of their 
living bodies; their bowels were burned before 
theirfaces; the executioner cut jokes to the next 
victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, 
that were reeking with the blood of the last; 
and the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges 
with the living to the place of suffering. Still, 
even so merry a monarch could not force one of 
these dying men to say that he was sorry for 
what he had done. Nay, the most memorable 
thing said among them was, that if the thing- 
were to do again they would do it. 

Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evi- 
dence against Strafford, and was one of the 
most stanch of the Republicans, was also tried, 
found guilty, and ordered for execution. When 



he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, after 
conducting his own defense with great power, 
his notes of what he had meant to sav to the 
people were torn away from him, and the drums 
and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and 
drown his voice; for, the people had been so 
much impressed by what the Regicides had 
calmly said with their last breath, that it was 
the custom now to have the drums and trumpets 
always under the scaffold, ready to strike up. 
Vane said no more than this; " It is a bad cause 
which cannot bear the words of a dying man," 
and bravely died. 

These merry scenes were succeeded by •an- 
other, perhaps even merrier. On the anniversary 
of the late King's death, the bodies of Oliver 
Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were torn out 
of their graves in Westminster Abbey, dragged 
to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day 
long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of 
Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be, stared at 
by a brutal-crowd, not one of whom would have 
dared to look the living Oliver in the face for 
half a moment! Think, after you have read this 
reign, what England was under Oliver Crom- 
well, who was torn out of his grave, and what it 
was under this merry monarch who sold it, like 
a merry Judas, over and over again. 

Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and 
daughter were not to be spared either, though 
they had been most excellent women. The 
base clergy of that time gave up their bodies, 
which had been buried in the Abbey, and —to 
the eternal disgrace of England — they were 
thrown into a pit, together with the mo'ldering 
bones of Pym and of the brave and bold old 
Admiral Blake. 

The clergy acted this disgraceful part because 
they hoped to get the Nonconformists, or Dis- 
senters, thoroughly put down in this reign, and 
to have but one Prayer-book and one service for 
all kinds of people, no matter what their private 
opinions were. This was pretty well, I think, 
for a Protestant Church, which bad displaced 
the Romish Church because people had a right 
to their own opinions in religious matters. How- 
ever, they carried it with a high hand, and a 
Prayer book was agreed upon, in which the ex- 
tremist opinions of Archbishop Laud were not 
forgotten. An Act was passed, too, preventing 
any Dissenter from holdingany officeunder any 
corporation. So, the regular clergy in their 
triumph were soon as merry as the King. The 
army being by this time disbanded, and the 
King crowned, everything was to go on easily 
for evermore. 

I must say a word here about the King's fam- 
ily. He .had not been long upon the throne 
when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and 
his sister the Princess of Orange, died within a 
few months of each other, of small-pox. His 
remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, mar- 
ried the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis 
the Fourteenth, King of France. His brother 
James, Duke' of York, was made High Admiral, 
and by and by became a Catholic. He was a 
gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man, with a re- 
markable partiality for the ugliest women in the 
country. He married, under very discreditable 
circumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of 
Lord Clarendon, then the King's principal 
Minister — not at all a delicate minister either, 
but doing much of the dirty work of a very 
dirty palace. It became important now that the 
King himself should be married; and divers 
foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the 
character of their son-m-law, proposed their 
daughters to him. The King of Portugal offered 
his daughter, Catherine of Braganza, and fifty 
thousand pounds; in addition to which, the 
French King, who was favorable to that match, 
offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The 
King of Spam, on the other hand, offered any 
one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopes 
of gain. But the ready money carried the day, 
and Catherine came over in state to her merry 
marriage. 

The whole court was a great flaunting crowd 
of debauched men and shameless women; and 
Catherine's merry husband insulted and out- 
raged her in every possible way, until she con- 
sented to receive* those worthless creatures as 
her very good friends, and to degrade. herself by 
their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom 
the King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterward 
Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most 
pow-erful of the bad women about the court, and 
had great influence with the King nearly all 
through his reign. Another merry lady named 
Moll Davies, a dancer at the theater, was after- 
ward her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an 
orange girl and then an actress, who really had 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



65 



good in her, and of whom one of the worst 
things I know is, that actually she does seem to 
have been fond of the King. The first Duke of 
St. Albans was this orange girl's child. . In like 
manner, the son of a merry wi.il mg-lady, whom 
the Kmg created Duchess of Portsmouth, be- 
came the Duke of Richmond. Upon the whole, 
it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner. 

The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry 
among these merry ladies, and some equally 
merry (and equally infamous) lords and gentle- 
men, that he soon got through his hundred 
thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising 
a little pocket money, made a merry bargain. 
He sold Dunkirk to 'the French King for five 
millions 0£ livres. "When 1 think of the dignity 
to which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the 
eyes of foreign powers, and when I think of the 
manner in which he gained for England this 
very Dunkirk, 1 am much inclined to consider 
that, if the Merry Monarch had been made to 
follow his father for this action, he would have 
received his just deserts. 

Though he was like his father in none of that 
father's greater qualities, he was like him in 
being worthy of no trust. When he sent that 
letter to the Parliament from Breda, he did ex- 
pressly promise that all sincere religious 
opinions should be respected. Yet he was no 
sooner firm in his power than he consented to 
one of the worst Acts of Parliament ever passed. 
Under this law, every minister who should not 
give his solemn assent to the Prayer-book by a 
certain day was declared to be a minister no 
longer, and to be deprived of his church. The 
consequence of this was that some two thousand 
honest men wen; taken from their congregations, 
and reduced to dire poverty and distress. It 
was followed by another outrageous law, called 
the Conventicle Act, by which any person above 
the age of sixteen who was present at any re- 
ligious service not according to (he Prayer-book 
was to be imprisoned three months for the first 
offense, six for the second, and to be transported 
for the third. . This Act alone filled the prisons, 
which were then most dreadful dungeons, to 
overflowing. 

The Covenanters in Scotland had already 
fared no better. A base Parliament, usually 
known as the Drunken Parliament, in conse- 
quence ol its principal members being seldom 
sober, had been got together to make laws 
against the Covenanters, and to force all men to 
be of one mind in religious matters. The Mar- 
quis of Argy le, relying on the King's honor, had 
given himself up to him;. .but he was wealthy, 
and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was 
tried fo?.' ! reason, on the evidence of some pri- 
vate letters in which he had expressed opinions' 
— as well he might — more favorable to the gov- 
ernment of the late Lord Protector than of the 
present merry and religious King. He was ex- 
ecuted, as were two men of mark among the 
Covenanters; and Sharp, a traitor who had once 
beeu the friend of the Presbyterians and betrayed I 



so fast, that it was necessary to shut up the 
houses in which sick people were, and to cut 
them off from communication with the liviug. 
Every one of these houses was marked on the 
outside of the door with a red cross, and the 
words, " Lord, have mercy upon us!" The 
streets were all deserted, grass grew in the pub- 
lic ways, aud there was a dreadful silence in 
the air. When night came on. dismal rumblings 
used to be heard, and these were the wheels of 
the death-carts, attended by men with veiled 
faces, and holding cloths to their mouths, who 
rang doleful bells, and cried in a loud aud solemn 
voice, "Bring out your dead!" The corpses 
put into these carts were buried by torchlight 
in great pits; no service being performed over 
them; all men being afraid to stay for a moment 
on the brink of the ghastly graves. In the gen- 
eral fear, children ran away from their parents, 
and parents from their children. Some who were 
taken ill died alone, and without any help. 
Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses 
who robbed them of all their money, and stole 
the very beds on which they lay. Some went 
mad, dropped from the windows, ran through 
the streets, and in their pain and freuzy flung 
themselves into the river. 

Tliese were not all the horrors of the time. 
The wicked and dissolute, in wild desperation, 
sat in the taverns singing roaring songs, and 
were stricken as they drank, and went out and 
died. The fearful aud superstitious persuaded 
themselves that they saw supernatural sights — 
burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and 
darts. Others pretended that at nights vast 
crowds of ghosts walked round and round the 
dismal pits. One madmA, naked, and carry- 
ing a brazier full of burning coals upon his 
head, stalked through the streets, erying out 
that he was a Prophet, commissioned to de- 
nounce the vengeance of the Lord on" wicked 
London. Another always went to and fro, ex- 
claiming. " Yet forty days, and London shall 
be destroyed!" A third awoke the echoes in 
the dismal streets by night and by day, and 
made the blood of the sick run cold, by calling 
out incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, " Oh, 
the great and dreadful God!" 

Through the months of Jul. - and August and 
September the Great Plague raged more and 
more. Great fir.es were lighted in the streets, 
in the hope of stopping the infection; but there 
was a plague of rain too, and it beat the fires 
out. At last, the winds which usually arise at \ 
that time of the year which is called the equi- 1 
nox, when day and night are of equal length all 
over the world, began to blow, and to purify 
the wretched town. The deaths began to de- | 
crease, the red crosses slowly to disappear, the 
fugitives, to return, the shops to open, pale 
frightened faces to be seen in the streets. The 
Plague had been in every part of England, but 
in close and unwholesome London it had killed 
one hundred thousand people. 

All this time the Merry Monarch was as mer 



mense cloud of smoke, and in the nighttime 
there was a great tower of fire mounting up into 
the sky, which lighted the whole country land- 
scape for ten miles round. Showers of hot 
ashes rose into the air, and fell on distaut places;, 
flyiug sparks carried the conflagration to great 
distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at 
a time; church steeples fell down with tremen- 
dous crashes; houses crumbled into cinders by 
the hundred and the thousand. The summer 
had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were 
very narrow, and the houses mostly built of 
wood and plaster. Nothing could stop the tre- 
mendous fire but the want of more houses to 
bum, nor did it stop until the whole way from 
the Tower to Temple Bar was a desert, com- 
posed of the ashes of thirteen thousand houses 
and eighty-nine churches. 

This was a terrible visitation at the time, and 
occasioned great loss and suffering to the two 
hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were 
obliged to lie in the fields under the open night 
sky, or in hastily made huts of mud aud straw, 
while the lanes and roads were rendered impas- 
sable by carts which had broken down as they 
tried to save their goods. But the Fire was a 
great blessing to the City afterward, for it arose 
from its rums very much improved — built more 
regularly, more widely, more cleanly and care- 
fully, and therefore fnucu more healthily. It 
might be far more healthy than it is, but there 
are some people in it still— even now, at this 
time, nearly two hundred years later — so selfish, 
so pig-headed, ana so ignorant, that I doubt if 
even another Great Fire would warm them up 
to do their duty. 

The Catholics were accused of having willful- 
ly set London in flames; one poor Frenchman, 
who had been mad for years, even accused him 
self of having with his own hand fired the first 
house. There is no reasonable doubt, however, 
that the fire was accidental. An inscription on 
the Monument long attributed it to the Catho- 
lics; but it is removed now, and was always a 
malicious and stupid untruth. 



them, was made Archbishop of St. Andrews", to I ry as ever, and as worthless as ever. AH lliis 
teach the Scotch how to like bishops. time the debauched lords and gentlemen aud the 

Things being in this merry stale at home, the shameless ladies danced and gamed and drank, 
Merry Monarch undertook a war with the and loved and hated one another, according to 
Dutch; principally because they interfered with ,their merry ways. So little humanity did the 
an Af riciu company, established with the two Government learn from the late affliction, that 
Objects o^ buying gold dust aud slaves, of which ' one of the first things the Parliament did, when 



the Duke of "2ork was a leading member. 
After some preliminary hostilities, the said 
Duke sailed, to the coast of Holland with a fleet 
of ninety-eight vessels of war, and four fire- 
ships. This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of no 
fewer than one hundred and thirteen ships. In 
the great battle between the two forces, the 
Dutch lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and 
seven thousand men. BuFthe English on shore 
were in no mood of exultation when they heard 
the news. 

For, this was the year and the time of,the 
Great Plague in London. During the winter of 
one thousand six hundred and sixty-four it had 
been whispered about that some few people had 
died here and there of the disease called the 
Plague, in some of the unwholesome suburbs 
around Loudon. News was not published at 
that time as it is now, and some people believed 
these rumors, and some disbelieved them, and 
they were soon forgotten. But, in the month of 
May, one thousand six hundred and sixty-five, 
it began to be said all over the town that the 
disease had burst out with great violence in St. 
Giles's, and that the people were dying in great 
numbers. This soon turned out to be awfully 



it met at Oxford (beiug as yet afraid to come to 
London) was to make a law, called the Five 
Mile Act, expressly directed against those poor 
ministers who, in the time of the Plague, had 
manfully come back to comfort the unhappy 
people. This infamous law, by forbidding 
them to teach in any school, or to come within 
five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed 
them to starvation and death. 

The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The 
King of France was now in alliance with the 
Dutch,,though his navjr was chiefly employed 
in looking on while the English and Dutch 
fought. The Dutch gained one victory; and 
the English gained another and a greater; and 
Prince Rupert, one of the English admirals, 
was out in the Channel one windy, night, look- 
ing for the French Admiral, with' thelutention 
of giving him something more to do than he had 
had yet, when the gale increased to a storm, and 
blew him into St. Helen's. That night was the 
third of September, one thousand six hundred 
and sixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great 
Fire of London. 

It broke out at a baker's shop near London 
Bridge, on the spot on which the Monurn?nl 



true. The roads out of London were choked up I now'stands as a remembrance of those raging ! 
by people endeavoring to escape from the in- ! flames, it spread and spread, and burned'and 
fected city, and large turns were oaid for any ! burned, for three days. The nights were lighter 
tonl of conveyance. The disease soon spread than the days; m the day time "there was au im-' 



Second Paet. 

That the Merry Monarch might be very merry 
indeed, in the merry times yhen'his people were 
suffering under pestilence and fire, he drank 
and sambled and flung away among his favor- 
ites the money which the Parliament had voted 
for the war. The consequence of this was that 
the stout-hearted English sailors were merrily 
starving of want, and dying in the streets; 
while the Dutch, under their admirals De Witt 
and De Ruyter, came into the river Thames, 
and up the river Medway as far as Upnor, 
burned the guard-ships, silenced the weak bat- 
teries, and did what they would to the English 
coast for six whole weeks. Most of the English 
ships that could have prevented them had 
neither powder nor shot on board; in this merry 
reign public officers made themselves as merry 
as the King did with the public money; and, 
when it was intrusted to them to spend in na- . 
tional defenses or preparations, they put it into 
their own pockets with the merriest grace in the 
world. 

Lord Clarendon had. by this time, run as long 
a course as is usually allotted to the unscrupu- 
lous ministers of bad kings. He was impeached 
by his political opponents, but unsuccessfully. 
The King then commanded him to withdraw 
from England and retire to France, which he 
did, after defending himself in writing. He was 
no great loss at home, and died abroad some 
seven years after wnid. 

There then came, into power a ministry called 
the Cabal Ministry, because it was composed of 
Lord Clifford, the Earl of Arlington, the Duke 
of Buckingham (a great rascal and the King's 
most powerful favorite), Lord Ashley, and the 
Duke of Lauderdale, c. a. b. a. l. As the 
French were making conquests in Flanders, the 
first Cabal proceeding was to make & treaty with 
the Dutch for uniting with Spain to oppose the 
French. It was no sooner made than the Merry 
Monarch, who always wanted to get money 
without beiug accountable to a Parliament for 
his expenditure, apologized to Jhe King of 
France for having had anything to do with it, 
and concluded a secret treaty with him, making 
himself his infamous pensioner to the amount 
of two millions of livres down, and three mill- 
ions more a year; and engaging to desert that 
very Spam, to make war against those very 
Dutch, and to declare himself a Catholic when a 
convenient time should arrive. This religious 
King had lately been crying to his Catholic 
brother on the subject of his strong desire to bfe 



Q6 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



a Catholic ; and now he merrily concluded this 
treasonable conspiracy against the country he 
governed, by undertaking to become one as soon 
as he safely could. For all of which, though he 
had had ten merry heads instead'of one, he rich- 
ly deserved to lose them by the headsman's ax. 

As this one merry head might have been far 
irom safe if these things had been known, they 
were kept very quiet, and war was declared by 
France and England against the Dutch. But, 
a very uncommon man, afterward most impor- 
tant to English history and to the religion and 
liberty of this land, arose among them, and for 
many long years defeated the whole projects of 
France, This was William of Nassau, Prince 
of Orange, son of the last Prince of Orange of 
the same name, who married the daughter of 
Charles the First of England. He was a young 
man at this time, only just of age; but he was 
brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father had 
Ibeen so detested that, upon his death, the Dutch 
had abolished the authority to which this son 
would have otherwise succeeded (Stadlholder it 
was called), and placed the chief power in the 
hands of John de Witt, who educated this 
young Prince. Now, the Prince became very 
popular, and John de Witt's brother Cornelius 
was sentenced to banishment on a false accusa- 
tion of conspiring to kill him. John went to 
the prison where he was, to take him away to ex- 
ile, in his coach; and a great mob, who collected 
on the occasion, then and there pruelly murdered 
■both the brothers. This left the government in 
the hands of the Prince, who was really the 
choice of the nation; and from this time he ex- 
ercised it with the greatest vigor, against the 
whole power of France, under its famous gen- 
erals Conde and Turenne, and in support of the 
Protestant religioD. It was full seven years be- 
fore this war ended in a treat)' of peace made at 
Nimeguen, and its details would occupy a very 
considerable space. It is enough to say that 
William of Orange established a famous char- 
acter wi'h the whole world; and that the Merry 
Monarch, adding to and improving on his for- 
mer baseness, bound himself to do everything 
the King of France liked, and nothing the King 
of France did not like, for a pension of one 
hundred thousand pounds a year, which was 
afterward doubled. Besides this, the King of 
France, by means of his corrupt embassador — 
who wrote accounts of his proceedings in Eng- 
land, which are not always to be believed, I 
think — bought our English members of Parlia- 
ment as he wanted them. So, in point of fact, 
during a considerable portion of this merry 
reign, ("he King of France was the real King of 
this country. 

But there was a better time to come, and it 
•was to come (though his Royal uucle little 
thought so) through that very William, Prince 
of Orange. He came over to England, saw 
.Mary, the elder daughter of the Duke of York, 
and "ma'-ried her.' We shall see by and by what 
came of that marriage, and why it is never to 
lie forgotten. 

This daughter was a Protestant, ' but her 
mother died a Catholic. She and her sister 
Anne, also a Protestant, were the only sur- 
vivors of eight children. Anne afterward mar- 
vied George, Prince of Denmark, brother to the 
King of that country. 

Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the 
injustice of supposing that he was even good- 
humored (except when he had everything his 
own way), or that he was high spirited and hon- 
orable, I will mention here what was done to a 
member of the House of Commons, Sir John 
Coventry. He made a remark in a debate about 
taxing the theaters, which gave the King offense. 
The King agreed with his illegitimate son, who 
liad been born abroad, and whom he had made 
Duke of Monmouth, to take the following merry 
■vengeance. To waylay him at night, fifteen 
armed men to one, and to slit his nose with a 
penknife. Like master, like man. The King's 
•favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, was strong- 
ly suspected of setting on an assassin to murder 
the Duke of Ormond as he was returning home 
from a dinner; and that Duke's spirited son, 
Lord Osscry, was so persuaded of his guilt, 
that he said to him at court, even as he stood 
beside the King, " My lord, I know very well 
that you are at the bottom of this late attempt 
upon my father. But I give you warning, if he 
ever come to a violent end, his blood shall be 
npon you, and wherever 1 meet you I will pis- 
tol you! I will do so, though I find you stand- 
ing behind the King's chair; and 1 tell vou this 
in his Majesty's presence, that you may be quite 
sure of my doing what I threaten." Those 
were merry times indeed. • 



There was a fellow named Blood who was 
seized for making, with two companions, an au- 
dacious attempt to steal the crown, the globe, 
and scepter from the place where the jewels 
were kept m the Tower. This robber, who was 
a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared that 
he was the man who had endeavored to kill the 
Duke of Ormond, and that he had meant to 
kill the King too, but was overawed by the maj- 
esty of his appearance, when he might other 
wise have done it, as he was bathing at Batter- 
sea. The King being but an ill-looking fellow, 
I don't believe a word of this. Whether he was 
flattered, or whether he knew that Buckingham 
had really set Blood on to murder the Duke, is 
uncertain. But it is quite certain that he par- 
doned this thief, gave him an estate of five hun- 
dred a year in Ireland (which had had the honor 
of giving him birth), and presented him at court 
to the debauched lords and the shameless ladies, 
who made a great deal of him — as I have no 
doubt they would have made of the Devil him- 
self, if the King had introduced him to them. 

Infamously pensioned as he was, the King 
still wanted money, and consequently was 
obliged to call Parliaments. In these, the great 
object of the Protestants was to thwart the 
Catholic Duke of York, who married a second 
time; his new wife being a young lady only 
fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the Duke 
of Modena. In this they were seconded by the 
Protestant Dissenters, though to their own dis- 
advantage; since, to exclude Catholics from 
power, they were even willing to exclude them- 
selves. The King's object was to pretend to be 
a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic; to 
swear to the bishops' that he was devoutly at- 
tached to the English Church, while he knew he 
had bargained it away to the King of France; 
and by cheating and deceiving them, and all 
who were attached to royalt}', to become des- 
potic and be powerful enough to confess what 
a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France, 
knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued 
with the King's opponents in Parliament, as 
well as with the King and his friends. 

The fears that the country had of the Catholic 
religion being restored, it the Duke of York 
should come to the throne, and the low cunning 
of the King in pretending to share their alarms, 
led to some very terrible results. A certain 
Dr. Tonge, a dull clergyman in the City, 
fell into the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a 
most'mfamous character, tvho pretended to have 
acquired among the Jesuits abroad a knowledge 
of a great plot for the murder of the King, and 
the re-establishment of the Catholic religion. 
Titus Oates, being produced by this unlucky 
Dr. Tonge, and solemnly examined before 
the Council, contradicted himself in a thousand 
ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable 
stories, and implicated Coleman, the' Secretary 
of the Duchess of York. Now, although what 
he charged against Coleman was not true, and 
although you and 1 know very well that the real 
dangerons Catholic plot was that one with the 
King of France of which the Merry Monarch 
was himself the head, there happened to be 
found among Colemau's papers some letters, in 
which he did praise (he days of Bloody Queen 
Mary, and abuse the Protestant religion. This 
was great good fortune for Titus, as it seemed 
to confirm him; but better still was in store. 
Sir Edmundbury Godfyey, the magistrate who 
had first examined him, being unexpectedly 
found dead near Primrose Hill, was confidently 
believed to have been killed by the Catholics. I 
think there is no doubt that he had been melan- 
choly mad, and that he killed himself; but he 
had a great Protestant funeral, and Titus was 
called the Savior of the Nation, and received a 
pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. 

As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with 
this success, up started another villain, named 
William Bedloe, who, attracted by a reward of 
five hundred pounds offered for the apprehen- 
sion of the murderers of Godfrey, came forward 
and charged two Jesuits and some other persons 
with having committed it at the Queen's desire. 
Oates, going into partnership with ihis new in- 
former," had the audacity to accuse the poor 
Queen herself of high treason. Then appeared 
a third informer, as bad as either of the two, and 
accused a Catholic banker named Stayley of 
having said that the King was the greatest rogue 
in the world (which would not have been far 
from the truth), and that he would kill him with 
his own hand. This banker, being at once tried 
and executed, Coleman and two others were 
tried and executed. Then, a miserable wretch 
named Prance, a Catholic silversmith, being ac- 
cused by Bedloe, was tortured into confessing 



that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and 
into accusing three other men of having com- 
mitted it. Then, five Jesuits were accused by 
Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together, and were 
all found guilty, and executed on the same kind 
of contradictory and absurd evidence. The 
Queen's physician and three monks were next 
put on their trial ; but Oates and Bedloe had for 
the time gone far enough, and these four were 
acquitted. The public mind, however, was so 
full of a Catholic plot, and so strong against 
the Duke of York, that James consented to 
obey a written order from his brother, and to 
go with his family to Brussels, provided that 
his rights should never be sacrificed in his ab- 
sence to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of 
Commons, not satisfied with this, as the King 
hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from 
ever succeeding to the throne. In return, the 
King dissolved the Parliament. He had de- 
serted his old favorite, the Duke of Bucking- 
ham, who was now in the opposition. 

To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of 
Scotland in this merry reign would occupy a 
hundred pages. Because the people would not 
have bishops, and were resolved to stand by 
their Solemn League and Covenant, such cruel- 
ties were inflicted upon them as make the blood 
run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through 
the country to punish the peasants for deserting 
the churches; sons were hanged up at their 
fathers' doors for refusing to disclose where their 
fathers were concealed; wives were tortured to 
death for not betraying their husbands ; people 
were taken out of their fields and gardens, and 
shot on the public roads without trial; lighted 
matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, 
and a most horrible torment called the Boot was 
invented, and constantly applied, which ground 
and mashed the victims' legs with iron wedges. 
Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners. 
All the prisons were full; all the gibbets were 
heavy with bodies; murder and launder devas- 
tated the whole country. In spite of all, the 
Covenanters were by no means to be dragged 
into the churches, and persisted in worshiping 
God as they thought right. A body of ferocious 
Highlanders, turned upon them from the mount- 
ains of their own. country had no greater effect 
than the English dragoons under Grahame of 
Claverhouse the most cruel and rapacious of 
all their enemies, whose name will ever be cursed 
through the length and breadth of Scotland. 
Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted 
all these outrages. But he fell at last; for when 
the injuries of the Scottisli people were at their 
height, he was seen, in his coach and six coming 
across a moor, by a body of men, headed by one 
John Balfour, who were waiting for another of 
their oppressors. Upon this they cried out that 
Heaven had delivered him into their hands, 
and killed him with many wounds. If ever a, 
man deserved such a death, I think Archbishop 
Sharp did. 

It made a great noise directly, and the Merry 
Monarch — strongly suspected of having goaded 
the Scottish people on, that he might have an 
excuse for a greater army than the Parliament 
were willing to give him — sent down his son, 
the Duke of Monmouth, as commander-in-chief, 
with instructions to attack the Scottisli rebels, 
or Whigs as they were called, whenever he 
came up with them. Marching with ten thou- 
sand men from Edinburgh, he found them, in 
number four or five thousand, drawn up at 
Bothwell Bridge, by the Clyde. They were 
soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a more 
humane character toward them than he had 
shown toward that Member o! Parliament 
whose nose he had caused to be siit with a pen- 
knife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their 
bitter foe. and sent Claverhouse to finish them. 

As the Duke of York became more and more 
unpopular, the Duke of Monrnoutk became 
more and more popular. It would have been 
decent in the latter not to have voted in favor 
of the renewed bill for the exclusion of James 
from the throne ; but he did so, much to the 
King's amusement, who vised to sit in the House 
of Lords by the fire, healing the debates, which 
he said we're as good as a play. The House of 
Commons passed the bill by a large majority, 
and it was carried up to the House of Lords by 
Lord Russell, one of the best of the leaders on the 
Protestant side. It was rejected there, chiefly be- 
cause the bishops helped the King to get rid of 
it; and the fear of Citholic plots revived again. 
There had been another got up by a fellow out 
of Newgate, named Dangerfield, which is more 
famous than it deserves to be, under the name 
of the Meal Tub Plot, This jail-bird, having 
,been got out of Newgate by a Mrs. Cellier, a 



A CHILD'S HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. 



67 



Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic himself, estant religion or with his loyalty, was tried for 



and pretended that he knew of a plot among the 
Presbyterians against the King's life. This was 
very pleasant to the Duke of York, who haled 
the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. 
He gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent 
him to the King his brother. But Dangerfield, 
breaking down"altogether in his charge, and be- 



high treason before a Scottish jury, of which 
the Marquis of Montrose was foreman, and was 
found guilty. He escaped the scaffold, for 
that time, by getting away, in the disguise of a 
page, in the train of his daughter, Lady Sophia 
Lindsay. It was absolutely proposed, by cer- 
tain members of the Scottish Council, that this 



in" senfback to Newgate, almost astonished the lady should be whipped through the streets of 
Duke out of his five senses by suddenly swear- Edinburgh. But this was too much even for 
in°- that the Catholic nurse had put that false the Duke, who had the manliness then (he had 



design into his head, and that what lie really 
knew about was a Catholic plot against the 
King; the evidence of which would be found 
in some papers, coucealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. 
Cellier's house. There they were, of course— 
for he had put them there himself— and so the 
tub gave the name to the plot. But, the nurse 



very little at most times), to remark that En 
glishmen were not accustomed to treat ladies in 
that manner. In those merry times nothing 
could equal the brutal servility of the Scottish 
fawners, but the conduct of similar degraded 
beings in England. 
After the settlement of these little affairs, the 



was "acquitted on her trial, and it came to noth- i Duke returned to England, aud soon resumed 
iug. his place at the Council, and his office of High 

Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was! now Lord Admiral— all this by his brother's favor, and in 
Shaftesbury, and was strong against the succes- open defiance of the law. It would have been 
sion of the Duke of York. "The House of Com- ! no loss to the country if he had been drowned 
mons, aggravated to the utmost extent, as we when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his 
may well suppose, by suspicions of the King's family, struck on a sandbank and was lost with 
conspiracy with the King of France, made a two hundred souls on board. But he escaped in 
desperate point of the exclusion still, and were a boat with some friends; and the sailors were 



bitter against the Catholics generally. So un- 
justly bitter were they, I grieve to say, that 
they "impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a 
Catholic nobleman seventy years old, of a de- 
sign to kill the King. The witnesses were that 
atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same 
feather, 
quite as 



so brave and unselfish, that when the}' saw him 
rowing away, they gave three cheers while they 
themselves were going down for ever. 

The Merry Monarch having got rid of his 
Parliament went to work to make himself des- 
potic with all speed. Having had the villainy 
He was found guilty, on evidence to order the execution of Oliver Plunket, Bishop 
foolish as it was false, and was be- of Armagh', falsely accused of a plot to establish 



headed on Tower Hill. The people were op- Popery iu that country by means of a French 

posed to him when he first appeared upon the army — the very thing this Royal traitor was 

scaffold ; but when he had addressed them, and himself trying to do at home — and having tried 

shown them how innocent he was and how to ruin Lord Shaftesbury and failed — he turned 

wickedly he was sent there, their better nature his hand to controlling the corporations all over 

was aroused, abd thCy said, " We believe you, the country; because, if he could only do that, 

my lord. God bless you, my lord!" he could get what juries he chose to bring in 

The House of Commons refused to let the perjured verdicts, and could get what members 

King have any money until he should consent to he chose returned to Parliament. These merry 

the Exclusion Bill ; but, as he could get it and did times produced and made Chief Justice of the 

get it from his master the King of France, he Court of King's Bench a drunken ruffian of the 

could afford to hold them very cheap. He called a name of Jeffreys; a red-faced, swollen, bloated 

Parliament at Oxford, to which he went down horrible creature, with a bullying roaring voice, 

with a great show ot being armed and protected and. a more savage nature, perhaps, than was 

as if he were in danger of his life, and to which ever lodged in any human breast. This monster 

the opposition members also we*nt armed and pro- was the Merry Monarch's especial favorite, and 

tected, alleging that they were in fear of the he testified his admiration of him by giving him 

Papists, who were numerous among the King's a ring from his own finger, which the people 

guards. However, they went on with the Ex- used to call Judge Jeffrey's Bloodstone. Him 



elusion Bill, aud were so earnest upon it that 
they would have carried it again, if the King 
had not popped his crown and state robes into 



the King employed to go about aud bully the 
corporations, beginning with London; or, as 
Jeffreys himself elegantly called it, "to give 



a sedan-chair, bundled himself into it along them a lick with the rough side of his tongue. ' : 

with them, hurried down to the chamber where And he did it so thoroughly, that they soon be- 

the House of Lords met, and dissolved the Par- came the basest and most sycophantic bodies in 

liament. After which he scampered home, and the kingdom— except the university of Oxford, 

the members of Parliament scampered home which, in that respect, was quite pre-eminent 



too, as fast as their legs could carry them. 

The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, 
had, under the law which excluded Catholics 
from public trust, no right whatever to public 



and unapproachable. 

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the 
King's failure against him), Lord William 
Russell, the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Howard, 



employment. Nevertheless, he was openly em- Lord Jersey, Algernon Sidney, John Hampden 

ployed as the King's representative in Scotland, (grandson of the great Hampden), and some 

and there gratified his sullen and cruel nature others, used to hold a council together after the 

to his heart's content by directing the dreadful dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what 

cruelties against the Covenanters. There were it might be necessary to do, if the King carried 

two ministers named Cargill and Cameron who his Popish plot to the utmost height. Lord 

had escaped from the battle of Bothwell Bridge, Shaftesbury, having been much the most vio- 

and who returned to Scotland, and raised the lent of this party, brought two violent men into 

miserable, but still brave aud unsubdued, Cove- their secrets— Rumsey, who had been a soldier 

Banters afresh, under the name of Cameronians. in the Republican army; and West, a lawyer. 

As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that These two knew an old officer of Cromwell's, 

the King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy Was called Rumbold, who had married a malster's 

shown to his unhappy followers after he was widow, and so had come into possession of a 

slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near 

particularly fond of the Boot, and derived great Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said 

pleasure from haviug it applied, offered their to them what a capital place this house of his 

lives to some of these people, if they would cry would be from which to shoot at the King, who 

on the scaffold. "God save the King!" But often passed there going to and from Nev*- 

their relations, friends, aud countrymen had market. They liked the idea, and entertained 

been so barbarously tortured aud murdered in it. But, one of their body gave information; 

this merry reign, that they preferred to die, and and they, together with Shepherd a wine mer- 

did die. The Duke then obtained his merry chant, Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, LordEs- 

s permission to hold a Parliament iu sex. Lord Howard, and Hampden, were all ar- 



Scotland. which first, with most shameless de 
ceil, confirmed the laws for securing the Prot- 
estant religion against Popery, and" then de- 
clared that nothing must or should prevent the 
succession of the Popish Duke. After this 
double-faced beginning, it established an oath 
which no human being could understand, but- 



rested. 

Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but 
scorned to do so, being innocent of any wrong; 
Lord Essex might have easily escaped, but 
scorned to do so, lest his flight should prejudice 
Lord Russell. But it weighed upon his mind 
that he had brought into their council Lord 



which everybody was to take, as a proof that Howard— who now turned a miserable traitor- 
his religion was the lawful religion. The Earl against a great dislike Lord Russell had always 
of Argyle, taking it wilh the explanation that had of him. He could not bear the reflection. 
he did not consider it to prevent him from fa- and destroyed himself before Lord Russell was 
Tonng any alteration either in the Church or . brought to trial at the Old Bailey. 
State which was not inconsistent with the Prot ' He" knew very we'l that he had nothing to 



hope, having always been manful in the Prot- 
estant cause against the two false brothers, the 
one on the throne, and the other standing next 
to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest aud best 
of women, who acted as li is- secretary on his trial 
who comforted him in his prison, who supped 
with him on the night before he died, and 
whose love aud virtue and devotion have made 
her name imperishable. Of course he was 
found guilty, and w;is sentenced to be beheaded 
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not many yards from 
his own house. When he had parted from his 
children on the evening before his death, his 
wife still stayed with him uni.il ten o'clock at 
night; aud when their final separation in this 
world was over, aud he had kissed her many 
times, he still sat for a long while in his prison, 
talking of her goodness. Hearing the rain fall 
fast at that time, he calmly said, " Such a rain 
to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a 
dull thing on a rainy day." At midnight he 
went to bed, and slept till four; even when his 
servant called him, he fell asleep again while 
his clothes were being made ready, lie rode to 
the scaffold in his own carriage, attended by 
I two famous clergymen, Tillotson and Burnet, 
and sang a psalm to himself very softly as he 
went along. He was as quiet and as steady as 
if he had been going out for an ordinary ride. 
After saying that he was surprised to see so 
great a crowd, he laid down his head upon the 
block, as if upon the pillow of his bed, and had 
it struck off at the second blow. His noble wife 
was busy for him even then; for that true- 
hearted lady printed and widely circulated his 
last words, of which he had given her a copy. 
They made the blood of all the honest men in 
England boil. 

The University of Oxford, distinguished it- 
self on the very same day b}' pretending to be- 
lieve that the accusation against Lord Russell 
was true, and by calling the King, in a written 
paper, the Breath of their Nostrils aud the 
Anointed of the Lord. This paper the Parlia- 
ment afterward caused to be burned by the 
common hangman; which I am sorry for, as I 
wish it had been framed and glazed' aud hung 
up in some public place, as a monument of 
baseness for the scorn of mankind. 

Next came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at 
which Jeffreys presided, like a crimson toad, 
sweltering and swelling witn rage. "1 pray 
God, Mr. Sidney," said this Chief Justice of a 
merry reign, after passing sentence, "to work 
in you a temper fit to go to the other world, 
for I see you are not fit for this." " My lord," 
said the prisoner, composedly holding out his 
arm, " feel my pulse, aud see it I be disordered. 
I thank Heaven I never was in better temper 
than I am now." Algernon Sidney was exe- 
cuted on Tower Hill on the seventh of Decem- 
ber, one thousand six hundred and eighty-three. 
He died a hero, and died, in his own words, 
" For that good old cause in which he hail been 
engaged from his youth, aud for which God had 
so often and so wonderfully declared himself." 

The Duke of Monmouth hail been making 
his uncle, the Duke of York, very jealous, by 
going about the country in a royal sort of way, 
playing at the people's games, becoming god- 
father to their children, and even touching for 
the King's evil, or stroking the faces of the sick 
to cure them — though, for the matter of that, I 
should say he did them about as much good as 
any crowned King could have done. His fa- 
ther had got him to write a letter, confessing his 
haviug had a part in the conspiracy for which 
Lord Russell had been beheaded; hut he was 
ever a weak man, and as soon as he had written 
it. he was ashamed of it, and got it back again. 
For this he was banished to the Netherlands; 
but he soon returned and had au interview with 
his father, unknown to his uncle. It would 
seem that he was coming into the Merry Mon- 
arch's favor again, and that the Duke of Y'ork 
was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to 
the merry galleries at Whitehall, and astonished 
the debauched lords and gentlemen and the 
shameless ladies very considerably. 

On Monday, the second of February, one 
thousand six hundred and eight-five, the merry 
pensioner and servant of the King of France 
fell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednes- 
day his case was hopeless, and on the Thurs- 
day he was told so. As lie made a difficult}' 
about taking the sacrament from the Protest- 
ant Bishop of Bath, the Duke of Y'ork got all 
who were present away from the bed, and 
asked his brother, in a whisper, if he should 
send for a Catholic priest? The King replied, 
"For God's sake, brother, do!" The Duke 
smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised in a 



68 



A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAITO. 



wig and gown, a priest named Huddleston, against him with such vigor as to prevent his . 
who had saved the King's life after the battle raising more than two or three Ihousand High- 
of Worcester: telling him that this worthy landers, although he sent a fiery cross, by trusty 
man in the wig had once saved his body, and , messengers, from clan to clan and from glen 
was now come to save his soul. I to glen, as the custom then was when those wild ! 

The Merry Monarch, lived through that : people were to be excited by their chiefs. As ; 
night, and died before noon on the next day, he was moving toward Glasgow with his small , 
which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last force, he was betrayed by some of his followers, '. 
things he said were of a human sort, and your taken, and carried, with his hands tied behind ! 
remembrance will give him the full benefit of , his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle, j 
them. Wher the Queen sent to say she was ! James ordered him to be executed, on his old ! 
too unwell 1 1 attend him, and to ask his par- j shamefully unjust sentence, within three days; j 
don, he said, " Alas! poor woman, she beg my and he appears to have been anxious that his 
pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take legs should have been pounded with his old 
back that answer to her." And he also said, j favorite the boot. However, the boot was not 
in reference to Nell Gwyn, " Do not let poor j applied; he was simply beheaded, and his head 



Nelly starve. ' 

He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, 
and the twenty -fifth of his reign. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND. 

Kino James the Second was 
very 



was set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One 
of those Englishmen who had been assigned 
to him was that old soldier Rumbold the master 
o/ the Rye House. He was sorely wounded, 
and, within a week after Argyle had suffered 
with great courage, was brought up for trial, lest 
he should die and disappoint the King. He, 
too, was executed, after defending himself with 
great spirit, and saying that he did not believe 
that God had made the greater part of mankind 
to carry saddles on their hacks and bridles in 
torfans has favored his brother Charles, as their mouths, and to be ridden by a few, booted 
becoming, _by comparison, quite a pleasant and spurred for the _ purpose— in which I 



the 
disagreeable, that even 



a man so 
the best of his- 



character. The one object of his short reign was 
to re-establish the Catholic religion in England; 
and this he doggedly pursued with such a 
stupid obstinacy, that his career very soon came 
to a close. 

The first thing he did was to assure his Coun- 
cil that he would make it his endeavor to pre- 
serve- the Government, both in Church and 
State, as it was by law established; and that 
he would always take care to defend and sup- 
port the Church. Great public acclamations 
were raised over this fair speech, and a great 
deal was said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, 



thoroughly agree with Rumbold, 

The Duke of Monmouth, partly through be- 
ing detained, and partly through idling his 
time away, was five or six weeks behind his 
friend when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset: 
having at his right hand an unlucky nobleman 
called Lord Grey of Werk, who of himself 
would have ruined a far more promising ex- 
pedition. He immediately set up his standard ! 
in the market-place, and proclaimed the King a j 
tyrant, and a Popish usurper, and I know not 
what else; charging him, not only with what 
he had done, which was bad enough, but with j 



about the word of a King "which was never what neither he nor anybody else had done, 
broken, by credulous people who little supposed ; such as setting fire _ to London, and poisoning 



that he had formed a secret council for Catholic 
affairs, of which a mischievous Jesuit, called 
Father Petre, 'was one of the chief members. 
"With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as 
the beginning of his pension from the King of 
France, five hundred thousand livres; yet, with 
a mixture of meanness and arrogance that be- 
longed to his contemptible character, he was 



the late King. Raising some four thousand 
men by these means, he marched on to Taun- 
ton, where there many Protestant Dissenters 
who were strongly opposed to the Catholics. 
Here, both the rich and poor turned out to, re- 
ceive him, ladies waved a welcome to him from 
all the windows as he passed along the streets, 
flowers were strewn in his way, and every com 



always jealous of making some show of being pliment and honor that could be devised was 

independent of the King of France, while he showered upon him. Among the rest, twenty 

pocketed his money. As — notwithstanding his young ladies came forward, in their best 

publishing two papers in favor of Popery (and clothes, and in their brightest beauty, and gave 



not likely I o do it much service, I should think) 
written by the King, his brother, and found in 
his strong-box; and his open display of himself 
attending mass — the Parliament was very ob- 
sequious, and granted him a large sum of money, 
he began his reign with a belief that he could 



him a Bible ornamented with their own fair 
hands, together with other presents. 

Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed 
himself King, and went on to Bridgewater. 
But here the Government troops, under the 
Earl of Feversham, were close at hand ; and he 



do what he pleased, and with a determination ; was so dispirited at finding that he made hut 
to do it few powerful friends after all, that it was a 

Before we proceed to its principal events, let question whether he should disband his army 
us dispose of Titus Oates. He was tried for ; and endeavor to escape. It was resolved, at 
perjury, a fortnight after the coronation, and, the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to 
beside?; being very heavily fined, was sentenced make a night attack on the King's army as it 
to stan-J twice in the pillory, to be whipped lay encamped on the edge of a morass called 
from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded 
Newgate to Tyburn two days afterward, and to , by the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave 
stand in the pillory five times a year as long man. He gave up the battle almost at the first 
as he lived. This fearful sentence was actually obstacle— which was a deep drain ; and although 
inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand the poor countrymen, who had turned out for 
after his first flogging, he was dragged on a : Monmouth, fought bravely, with scythes, poles, 
sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they 
he was drawn along. He was so strong a had, they were soon dispersed by the trained 
villain that he did not die under the torture, but ! soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the 
lived to be afterward pardoned and rewarded, Duke of Monmouth himself fled was not known 



though not to be ever believed in any more. 
Dangerfield, the only other one of that crew 
left alive, was not so fortunate. He was almost 
killed by a whipping from Newgate to Tyburn, 
and, as if that were not punishment enough, a 
ferocious barrister of Gray's Inn gave him a 



m the confusion; hut the unlucky Lord Grey 
was taken early next day, and then another of 
the party was taken, who confessed that he had 
parted from the Duke only four hour before. 
Strict search being made, he was found dis- 
guised as a peasant, hidden in a ditch under 



poke in the eye with his cane, which caused fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocket 



his death; for which the ferocious barrister was 
deservedly tried and executed. 

As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle 
and Monmouth went from Brussels to 
Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of Scottish 
exiles held there, to concert measures for a ris- 
ing in England. It was agreed that Argyle 
should effect a landing in Scotland, and Mon- 
mouth in England; and that two Englishmen 
should be sent with Argyle to be in his confi- 
dence, and two Scotchmen with the Duke of 
Monmouth. 

Argyie was the first to act upon this contract. 
But, two of his men being taken prisoners at 
the Orkney Islands, the Government became 
aware of his intention, and was able to act 



which he had gathered in the fields I o eat. The 
only other articles he had upon him were a few 
papers and little books: one of the latter being 
a strange jumble, in his own writing, of 
charms, songs, recipes, and prayers. He was 
completely broken. He wrote a miserable 
letter to the King, beseeching and entreating to 
be allowed to see him. When he was taken to 
London, and conveyed bound into the King's 
presence, he crawled to him on his knees, and 
made a most degrading exhibition. As James 
never forgave or relented toward anybody, he 
was not likely to soften toward- the issuer of 
the Lyme, proclamation, so he told the suppli- 
ant to prepare for death. 

On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six 



hundred and eighty-five, this unfortunate 
favorite of the people was brought out to die on 
Tower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the 
tops of all the houses were covered with gazers. 
He had seen his wife, the daughter of the Duke 
of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked 
much of a lady whom he loved far better— the 
Lady Harriet Wentwoith — who was one of the 
last persons he remembered in this life. Before 
laying down his head upon the block he felt the 
edge of the ax, and told the executioner that 
he feared it was not sharp enough, and that the 
ax was not heavy enough. On the executioner 
replying that it was of the proper kind, the 
Duke said, " I pray you have a care, and do not 
use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord 
Russell." The executioner, made nervous by 
this, and trembling, struck once, and merely 
gashed him in the neck.- Upon this, the Duke 
of Monmouth raised his head and looked the 
man reproachfully in the face. Then he struck 
twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the 
ax, and cried out in a voice of horror that he 
could not finish that work. The sheriffs, how- 
ever, threatening him with what should be done 
to himself if he did not, he took it up again, 
and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. 
Then the wretched head at last fell off, and 
James, Duke of Monmouth, was dead, in the 
thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a showy, 
graceful man, with many popular qualities, and 
had found much favor in the open hearts of the 
English. ' • > 

The atrocities committed by the Government, 
which followed this Monmouth rebellion, form 
the blackest and most lamentable page in En- 
glish history. The poor peasants having been 
dispersed with great loss, and their leaders hav- 
ing- been taken, one would think that the im- 
placable King might have been satisfied But 
no; he let loose upon them, among other intolera- 
ble monsters, a Colonel Kirk, who had served 
against the Moors, and whose soldiers— called 
by the people Kirk's lambs, because they bore a 
lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Chris- 
tianity—were worthy of their leader. The 
atrocities committed by these demons in human 
shape are far too horrible to be related here. 
It is enough to say, that, besides most ruthless- 
ly n*urdering and robbing them, and ruining 
them by making them buy their pardons at the 
price of all they possessed, it was one of Kirk's 
favorite amusements, as he and his officers sat 
drinking after dinner, and toasting the King, 
to have batches of prisoners hanged outside Die 
windows for the company's diversion; and that 
when their feet quivered in the convulsions of 
death, he used to swear that they should have 
music to their dancing, and would order the 
drums to beat and the trumpets to play. The 
detestable King'iniormed him,' as an acknowledg- 
ment of these services, that he was " very well 
satisfied with his proceedings." But the 
King's great delight was in the proceedings of 
Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the 
West, with four other judges, to try persons 
accused of having had any share in the rebell 
ion. The King pleasantly called this " Jeff 
reys's campaign. " The people down in that 
part of the country remember it to this day as 
the Bloody Assize. 

It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old 
lady, Mrs. Alicia Lisle, the widow of one of 
the judges of Charles the First (who had been 
murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), 
was charged with having given shelter in her 
house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three 
times the jury refused to find her guilty, until 
Jeffreys bullied and frightened them into that 
false verdict. When he had extorted it from 
them he said, "Gentlemen, if I had been one 
of you, and she had been my own mother, I 
would have found her guilty?"— as I dare say 
he would. He sentenced her to be burned alive 
that very afternoon. The clergy of the cathedral 
and some others interfered in her favor, and 
she was beheaded within a week. As a high 
mark of his approbation, the King made Jeffreys 
Lord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dor- 
chester, to Exeter, to Taunton, and to Wells. 
It is astonishing, when we read of the enormous 
injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know 
that no one struck him dead on the judgment- 
seat. It was enpugh for any man or woman to 
be accused by an enemy before Jeffreys, to be 
found guilty of high treason. One man who 
pleaded not guilty he ordered to be taken out 
of Court upon the instant, and hanged; and 
this so terrified the prisoners in general, that 
they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At Dor 
Chester alone, in the course of a few days, Jeff- 
reys hanged eighty people; besides whipping, 



A CHILD'S HISTOET OF ENGLAND. 



69 



transporting, imprisoning and Belling as slaves, 
great numbers. He executed, in all, two hun- 
dred and fifty, or three hundred. 

The.e exciilions took place, among the neigh- 
bors and friends of the sentenced, in thirty-six 
towns and villages. Tbeir bodies were mangled, 
steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and tar, 
and bung up by the roadsides, in the streets, 
over the very churches. The sight and smell 
•of heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling 
of the infernal caldrons, and the tears and ter- 
rors of the people, were dreadful beyond all 
description. One rustic, who was forced to 
.steep the remains in the black pot, was ever 
afterward called " Tom Boilman. " The hang- 
man has ever since been called Jack Ketch, be- 
cause a man of that name went hanging and 
hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. 
You will hear much of the horrors of the great 
French Revolution. Many and terrible they were, 
there is no doubt ; but I know of nothing worse, 
done by the maddened people of France in that 
awful time, than was done by the highest judge 
in England, with the express approval of the 
King of England, in the Bloody Assize. 

Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of 
money for himself as of misery for others, and 
he sold pardons wholesale to' fill his pockets. 
The King ordered, at one time, a thousand 
prisoners to be given to certain of his favorites, 
in order that they might bargain with them for 
their pardons. The young ladies of Taunton 
who had presented the Bible were bestowed 
upon the maids of honor at the Court; and 
those precious ladies made very hard bargains 
with them indeed. When the Bloody Assize 
was at its most dismal height, the King was 
diverting himself with horse-races in the very 
place where Mrs. Lisle had been executed. 
When Jeffreys had done his worst, and came 
home again, he was particularly complimented 
in the Royal Gazette: and, when the King heard 
that through drunkenness and raging he was very 
ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such an- 
other man could not easily be found in Eng- 
land. Besides all this, a former sheriff of Lon 
don, named Cornish, was hanged within sight 
of his own house, after an abominably conducted 
trial, for having had a share in the Rye House 
Plot, on evidence given by Rumsey, which that 
villain was obliged to confess was directly op- 
posed to the evidence he had given on the trial 
of Lord Russell. And on the very same day, a 
worthy widow, named Elizabeth Gaunt, was 
burned alive at Tyburn, for having sheltered a 
wretch who himself gave evidence against her. 
She settled the fuel about herself with her own 
hands, "so that the flames should reach her 
quickly; and nobly said, with her last breath, 
that she had obeyed the sacred command of 
God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to 
betray the wanderer. 

After all this hanging, beheading, burning, 
boiling, mutilating, exposing, robbing, trans- 
porting, and selling into slavery, of his unhappy 
subjects, the King not unnaturally thought that 
he could do whatever he would. So, he went 
to work to change the religion of the country 
with all possible speed; and what he did was 
this. 

He first of all tried to get rid of what was 
called the Test Act — which prevented the Cath- 
olics from holding public employments — by his 
own power of dispensing with the penalties. He 
tried it in one case, and, eleven of the twelve 
judges decidiug in his favor, he exercised it in 
three others, being those of three dignitaries of 
University College, Oxford, who had become 
Papists, and whom he kept in their places and 
sanctioned. He revived the hated Ecclesiastical 
Commission, to get rid of Compton, Bishop of 
London, who manfully opposed him. He solic- 
ited the Pope to favor England with an embas- 
sador, which the Pope (who was a sensible man 
then) rather unwillingly did. He flourished 
Father Petre before the' eyes of the people on 
all possible occasions. He favored the establish- 
ment of conveuts in several parts cf London. 
He was delighted to have the streels, and even 
the court itself, filled with monks and friars in 
the habits of their orders. He constantly en- 
deavored to make Catholics of the Protestants 
about him. He held private interviews, which 
he called " closetings," with those Members of 
Parliament who held offices, to persuade them 
to consent to the design he had in view. When 
they did not consent, they were removed, or re- 
signed of themselves, and their places were 
given to Catholics. He displaced Protestaut 
officers from the army by every means in his 
power, and got Catholics "into their places too. 
He tried the same thing with the corporations, 



and also (though not so successfully) with the 
Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrify the 
people into the endurance of all these measures, 
he kept an army of fifteen thousand men en- 
camped on Hounslow Heath, where mass was 
openly performed in the General's tent, and 
where priests went among the soldiers endeav- 
oring to persuade them to become Catholics. 
For circulating a paper among those men advis- 
ing them to be true to their religion, a Protestant 
clergyman, named Johnson, the chaplain of the 
late Lord Russell, was actually sentenced to 
stand three times in the pillory, and was actually 
whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dis- 
missed his own brother-in-law from his Council 
because he was a Protestant, and made a Privy 
Councilor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. 
He handed Ireland over to Richard Talbot, Earl 
of Tyrconnell, a wortldess, dissolute knave, who 
played the same game there for his master, and 
who played the deeper game for himself of one 
day putting it under the protection of the 
French King. In going to these extremities, 
every man of sense ard judgment among the 
Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that 
the King was a mere bigoted fool, who would 
undo Himself and the cause he sought to ad- 
vance; but he was deaf to all reason, and, hap- 
pily for England ever afterward, went tumbling 
off his throne in his own blind way. 

A spirit began to arise in the country, which 
the besotted blunderer little expected. He first 
found -it out in the University of Cambridge. 
Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford with- 
out any opposition, he tried to make a monk a 
master of arts at Cambridge; which attempt the 
University resisted, and defeated him. He then 
went back to his favorite Oxford. On the death 
of the President of Magdalen College, he com- 
manded that there should be elected to succeed 
him one Mr. Anthony Farmer, whose only rec- 
ommendation was, that he was of the King's re- 
ligion. The University plucked up courage at 
last, and refused. The King substituted 
another man, and it still refused, resolving to 
stand by its own election of a Mr. Hough. The 
dull tyrant, upon this, punished Mr. Hough, 
and five-and-twenty more, by causing them to 
be expelled and declared incapable of holding 
any church preferment; then he proceeded to 
what he supposed to be his highest step, but to 
what was, in fact, his last plunge headforemost 
in his tumble off his throne. 

He had issued a declaration th;it there should 
be no religious tests or penal laws, in order to 
let in the Catholics more easily; but the Protest- 
ant Dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had 
gallantly joined the regular church in opposing 
it tooth and nail. The King and Father Petre 
now resolved to have this read, on a certain 
Sunday, in all the churches, and to order it to 
be circulated for that purpose by the bishops. 
The latter took counsel with the Archbishop of 
Canterbury, who was in disgrace ; and they re- 
solved that the declaration should not be rend, 
and that they would petition the King against 
it, The Archbishop himself wrote out the peti- 
tion, and six bishops went into the King's bed- 
chamber the same night to present it, to his in- 
finite astonishment. Next day w T as the Sunday 
fixed for the reading, and it was only read by 
two hundred clergymen out of ten thousand. 
The King resolved, against all advice, to prose- 
cute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench, 
and within three weeks they were summoned 
before the Privy Council, and committed to the 
Tower. As the six bishops were taken to that 
dismal place by water, the people who were as- 
sembled in immense numbers fell upon their 
knees, and wept for them, and prayed for them. 
When they got to the Tower, the officers and 
soldiers on guard besought them for their bless- 
ing. While they were confined there, the sol- 
diers every day drank to their release with loud 
shouts. When they were brought up to the 
Court of King's Bench for their trial, which the 
Attorney-Generalsaid was for the high offense 
of censuring theTjOvernment, and giving their 
opinion about affairs of state, they were attend- 
ed by similar multitudes, and surrounded by a 
throng of noblemen and gentlemen. When the 
jury went out at seven o'clock at night to con- 
sider of their verdict, everybody (except the 
King) knew that they would rather starve than 
yield to the King's brewer, who was one of 
them, and wanted a verdict for his customer. 
When the} 7 came into Court next morning, after 
resisting the brewer all night, and gave a verdict 
of not guilty, such a shout rose up in West- 
minster Hall as it had never heard before; and 
it was passed on among the people away to Tem- 
ple Bar, and away again to the Tower. It did 



not pas? only to the east, but passed to the west 
too, until it reached the camp at Hounslow, 
where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and 
echoed it. And still, when the dull Kino-, who 
was then with Lord Feversham, hsard the 
mighty roar, asked iu alarm what it v. as, aud 
was told that it was " nothing but the acquittal 
of the bishops, "he said, in his dogged way, 
" Call you that nothing? It is so much the 
worse for -them. " 

Between the petition and the trial the Queen 
had given birth to a son, which Father Petre 
rather thought was owing to St. Winifred. But 
I doubt if St. Winifred had much to do with it 
as the King's friend, inasmuch as the entirely 
new piospect of a Catholic successor (for both 
the King's daughters were Protestants) deter- 
mined the Earls of Shrewsbury, Dauby, and 
Devonshire, Lord Lumley, the Bishop of Lon- 
don, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney, to 
invite the Prince of Orange over to England. 
The Royal Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, 
in his fright, many great concessions, besides 
raising an army of forty thousand men; but the 
Prince of Orange was not a man for James the 
Second to cope with. His preparations were 
extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind was re- 
solved. 

For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to 
sail for England, a great wind from the west 
1 prevented the departure of his fleet. Even when 
I the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed 
by a storm, and was obliged to put back to refit. 
I At last, on the first of November, one thousand 
six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant 
: east wind, as it was long called, began to blow; 
| and, on the third, the people of Dover aud the 
people of Caiais saw a fleet twenty miles long 
sailing gallantly by, between the two places. 
j On Monday, the fifth, it anchored at Torbay, 
| in Devonshire^and the Prince, with a spendid 
! retinue of officers aud men, marched into Exe- 
ter. But the people in that western part of the 
country had suffered so much in the Bloody 
i Assize, that they had lost heart. Few people 
joined him ; and he began to think of returning, 
; and publishing the invitation he had received 
from those lords, as his justification f >r having 
'come at all. At this crisis some of gentn 
1 joined him; the Royal array began to falter; an 
j engagement <was Signed, by which all who set 
'their hand to it declared that they would sup- 
port one another in defense of the laws and lib- 
erties of the three kingdoms, of the Protest- 
| ant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. 
From that time the cause received no check; 
i the greatest towns in England began, one after 
' another, to declare for the Prince; and he knew 
that it was all safe with him when the Univer- 
sity of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if 
he wanted any money. 

By this time the King was running about in 
a pitiable way, touching people for the King's 
evil in one place, reviewing his troops in an- 
other, and bleeding from the nose in a third. 
The young Prince was sent to Portsmouth, 
Father Petre went off like a shot to France, 
and there was a general and swift dispersal of 
all the priests and friars. One after another, 
the King's most important officers and friends 
deserted him and went over to the Prince. In 
the night his daughter Anne fled from White- 
hall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who 
had once been a soldier, rode before her with a 
drawn sword in his hand, aud pistols at his sad- 
dle. " God help me," cried the miserable King: 
" my very children have forsaken me!" In his 
wildness, after debating with such lords as were 
in London whether he should or should not call 
a Parliament, and after naming three of them 
to negotiate with the Prince, he resolved to fly 
to France. He had the little Prince of Wales 
brought back from Portsmouth ; and the child 
and the Queen crossed the river to Lambeth in 
an open boat, on a miserable wet night, and got 
safely away. This was on the night of tha ra5th 
of December. 

At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, 
the King, who had, in the meantime, received 
a letter from the Prince of Orange, stating his 
objects, got out of bed, told Lord Northumber- 
land, who lay in his room, not to open the door 
until the usual hour iu the morning, and went 
down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, by 
which the priest in the wig and gown had come 
up to his brother), and crossed the river in a 
small boat: sinking the Great Seal of England 
by the way. Horses having been provided, he 
rode, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, to 
Feversham. where he embarked in a Custom- 
House hoy. The master of this hoy, wanting 
more- ballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get 



70 



A CHILD'S HISTOKY OF ENGLAND, 



it, where the fishermen and smugglers crowded 
about the boat, and informed the King of their 
suspicions that he was a " hatchet-faced Jesuit. " 
As they took his money and would not let him 
go, he told them who he was, and that the 
Prince of Orange wanted to take his life; arjd 
he began to scream for a boat — and then to cry, 
because be had lost a piece of wood on his ride 
which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's 
cross. He put himself into the hands of the 
Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his deten- 
tion was made known to the Prince of Orange 
at Windsor— who, only wanting to get rid of 
him, and not caring where he went, so that he 
went away, was very much disconcerted that 
they did not let him go. However, there was 
nothing for it but to have him brought back, 
with some state in the way of Life Guards, to 
Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his 
infatuation, he heard mass, and set a Jesuit to 
say grace at his public dinner. 

The people had been thrown into the strangest 
state of confusion by his flight, and had taken 
it into their heads that the Irish part of the army 
were going to murder the Protestants. There- 
fore, they set the bells a-ringing, and lighted 
watchfires, and burned Catholic chapels, and 
looked about in all directions for Father Petre 
and the Jesuits, while the Pope's embassador was 
running away in the dress of a footman. They 
found no Jesuits; but a man, who had once 
been a frightened witness before Jeffreys in 
Court, saw a swollen, drunken face looking 
through a window down at Wapping, which he 
well remembered. The face was in a sailor's 
dress, but he knew it to be the face of that ac- 
cursed 1 udge, and he seized him. The people, 
to theiHasting honor, did not tear him to pieces. 
After knocking him about a little, they took 
him, in the basest agonies of terror, to the Lord 
Mayor, who sent him at his own shrieking peti- 
tion, to the Tower for safety. There he died. 

Their bewilderment continuing, the people 
now lighted bonfires and made rejoicings, as if 
they had any reason to be glad to have the 
King back again. But his stay was very short, 
for Ihe English guards were removed from 
Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to 
it, and he was told by one of his late ministers 
that the Prince would enter London next day, 
and he had better go to Ham. He said Ham 
was a cold, damp place, and he would rather go 
to Rochester. He thought himself very cunning 
in this, as he meant to escape from Rochester to 
Prance. The Prince of Orange and his friends 
knew that perfectly well, and desired nothing 
more. So he went to Gravesend in his Royal 
barge, attended by certain lords, and watched 
by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous 
people, who were far more forgiving than he 
had ever been, when they saw him in his 
humiliation. On the night of the twenty-third 
of December, not even then understanding that 
everybody wanted to get rid of him, he went 
out absurdly through his Rochester garden, 
down to the Med tvay, and got away to France, 
where he rejoined the Queen. 

There had been a Council, in his absence, of 
the Lords, and the authorities of London. 
When the -Prince came, on the day after the 
King's departure, he summoned the Lords to 
meet him, and, soon afterward, all those who 
had served in any of the Parliaments of King- 
Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by 
these authorities that the throne was vacant by 
the conduct of King James the Second; that it 
was inconsistent with the safety and welfare of 
this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a 
Popish Prince; that the Prince and Princess of 
Orange should be King and Queen during their 
lives and the life of the survivor of them; and 
that tlieir children should succeed them, if they 
had any. That if they had none, the Princess 
Anne and her children should succeed; that if 
she had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange 
should succeed. 

On the thirteenth of January, one thousand 
six hundred and eighty-nine, the Prince and 
Princess, sitting on " a throne in Whitehall, 
bound themselves to these conditions. The 
Protestant religion was established in England, 
and England's great and glorious Revolution 
was complete. 



William and Mary reigned together five years. 
After the death of his good wife, William occu 
pied the throne alone for seven years longer. 
During his reign, on the sixteenth of September, 
one thousand seven hundred and one, the poor 
weak creature who had once been James the 
Second of England died in France. In the 
meantime he had done his utmost (which was 
not much) to cause William to be assassinated, 
and to regain Ins lost dominions. James's son 
was declared, by the French King, the rightful 
King of England ; and was called in France The 
Chevalier St. George, and in England The Pre- 
tender. Some infatuated people in England, 
and particularly in Scotland, took up the Pre 
tender's cause from time to time — as if the 
country had not had Stuarts enough! — and 
many lives were sacrificed, and much misery 
was occasioned. King William died on Sun- 
day, the seventh of March, one thousand seven 
hundred and two, of the consequences of an 
accident occasioned by his horse stumbling with 
him. He was always a' brave, patriotic Prince, 
and a man of remarkable abilities. His manner 
was cold, and he made but few friends; but he 
had truly loved his Queen. When he was 
dead, a lock of her hair, in a ring, was found 
tied with a black ribbon round his left arm. 

He was succeeded by the Princess Anne, a 
popular Queen, who reigned twelve years. In 
her reign, in the month of May, one thousand 
seven hundred and seven, the Union between 
England and Scotland was effected, and the 
two countries were incorporated under the name 
of Great Britain. Then, from the year one 
thousand seven hundred and fourteen to the 
year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, 
reigned the four Georges. 




Absolutely Puro. 

This powder never varies. A marvel of purity, 
strength and wholsomeness. More economical than the 
ordinary kinds, and cannotbe sold in competition with 
the multitude of low test, short weight, alum or phos- 
phate powders. Sold only in cavs. Royal Baking 
Powder Co., 106 Wall Street, New York. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

1 have now arrived at the close of my little 
history. The events which succeeded the fa- 
mous Revolution of one thousand six hundred 
and eighty-eight would neither be easily related 
nor easily understood in such a book as this. 



It was in the reign of George the Second, one 
thousand seven hundred and forty five, that the 
Pretender did his last mischief, and made his 
last appearance. Being an old man by that 
time, he and the Jacobites — as his friends were 
called — put forward his son, Charles Edward, 
known as the Young Chevalier. The High- 
landers of Scotland, an extremely troublesome 
and wrong-headed race on the subject of the 
Stuarts, espoused his cause, and he joined 
them, and there was a Scottish rebellion to 
make him King, in which many gallant and de- 
voted gentlemen lost their lives. It was a hard 
matter for Charles Edward to escape abroad 
again, with a hisih price on his head ; but the 
Scottish people were extraordinarily faithful to 
him, and, after undergoing many romantic ad- 
ventures, not unlike those of Charles the Sec- 
ond, he escaped to France. A number of 
charming stories and delightful songs arose out 
of the Jacobite feelings, and belong to the Jacob- 
ite times. Otherwise I think the Stuarts were 
a public nuisance altogether. 

It was in the reign of George the Third that 
England lost North America, by persisting in 
taxing her without her own consent. Thatim- 
mense country, made independent under Wash- 
ington, and left to itself, became the United 
States ; one of the greatest nations of the earth. 
In these times in which I write, it is honorably 
remarkable for protecting its subjects, wherever 
they may travel, with a dignity and a determina- 
tion which is a model for England. Between 
you and me, England has rather lost ground in 
this respect since the days of Oliver Cromwell. 

The Union of Great Britain with Ireland— 
which had been getting on very ill by itself — 
took place in the reign of George the Third, on 
the second of July, one thousand seven hun- 
dred and ninety-eight. 

William the Fourth succeeded George the 
Fourth in the year one thousand eight hundred 
and thirty, and reigned seven years. Queen 
Victoria, his nitee, the only child of the Duke 
of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third, 
came to the throne on the twentieth of June, 
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven. 
She was married to Prince Albert of SaxeGotha 
on the tenth of February, one thousand eight 
hundred and forty. She is verjrgood, and much 
beloved, bo I end, like the crier, with 

God Save the Queen! 

THE END. 




the best imm 
WASHING^BLEAOHXM 

IN HARD OR SOFT, HOT OR GOLD WATER. 

SAVES LABOR, TIME and SOAP AMAZ- 
INGLY, and gives universal satisfaction* 

No family, rich or poor should he without it. 

Sold by all Grocers. BEWABE of imitations 

well designed to mislead. PEAEUNE is the 

ONLY SAFE labor-saving compound, and 

always bears the above symbol, and name of 

JAMES PY1E, STEW TOSS. 



"OUIDA'S" WORKS " 

CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY: 
No. eta. 

49 Granville de Vigne; or, Held in Bondage 20 

54 Under Two Flags 30 

55 In a Winter City 10 

56 Strathmore 2:1 

59 Chandos .>. 20 

61 B6bee; or, Two Little Wooden Shoes 10 

62 Folle-Farine 20 

71 Ariadne: The Story of a Dream 20 

181 Beatrice Boville 10 

211 Randolph Gordon- 10 

230 Little Grand and the Marchioness 10 

241 Tpicotrin 20 

249 Cecil Castlemaine's Gage 10 

279 A Leaf in the Storm, and Other Tales 10 

281 Lady Marabout's Troubles 10 

334 Puck 20 

377 Friendship 20 

379 Pascarel 20 

386 Signa 29 

389 Idalia 20 

563 A Hero's Reward , 10 

676 TJmilta ' 10 

699 Moths 20 

791 Pipistrello 10 

864 Findelkind 10 

915 A Village Commune 20 

1025 The Little Earl 10 

1247 In Mareruma 20 

1334 Binibi 10 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent to aL" address, 
postage free, on receipt of 12 cents for single numbers, 
and 25 cents for double numbers. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
(P.O. box 3751.) 17 to 27 Vandewater St., New York. 



THE CONTEMPORARY REVSEW. 
THE NJMETEENTH CENTURY, 
THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. 

These periodicals are {or sale by all newsdealers, price 
iooeutfl each, or sent by mail, postage prepaid, 25 cent* 
saeh Subscription price, $2.25 a year. 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
.?. O. Box B751. 17 to 27 Vandewater street. N. V 



W. Clark Russell's Works 

CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY: 

No. ct«. 

280 The Wreck of the "Grosvenor" 10 

1339 The Wreck of the "Grosvenor" (large type).. 20 

848 A Sailor's Sweetheart 20 

1034 An Ocean Free Lance 20 

1373 My Watch Below; or, Yarns Spun When off 

Duty 20 

1381 Auld Lang Syne 10 

For sale by all newsdealers, or sent to any address, 
postage free, on receipt of 12 cents for single numbers, 
and 25 cents for doubfe numbers. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
(P.O. box 3751.) 17 to 27 Vandewater St. , New York. 



LIST OF MEW CUSOMOS. 



To every yearly subscriber sending $2.50 to this office for The New York Monthly Fashion Bazar, any one 
of the chrombs published by us will be scut free as a premium. Subscribers sending $2.ou for The New York 
Monthly Fashion Bazar should indicate the ehromo which they prefer, and it will be. forwarded post-paid. 
As we employ no traveling agents, all subscriptions should be sent direct to us. 



Alpine Glacier. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

A Misty Morning on the Juniata River. Size 15x21. 

Price 10 cents. 
Across the Kooky Mountains. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
American Fruit' Size 24x30. Price 40 rents. 
American Harvest. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Abandoned Mill. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Autumn in Alleghauies. Horseshoe Bend. Size 24x30. 

Price 40 cents. 
Autumn on the Wissahiekon. Size 24x30. Price 40cents. 
Autumn on Green Briar River. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 
Afternoon on the Mosel. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
A Bunch of Cattle. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
An Inviting Lunch. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
American Market Products. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Across the Sierra Nevada. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Autumn in the Catskills. A beautiful ehromo repre- 
senting these mountains. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 
Battle of Gettysburg. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Beatrice. After Guido's celebrated painting. Size 

24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Biugen on the Rhine. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Breaking Bread. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Blonde. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Brunette-. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Blatikenburg. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Balmoral Castle. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Cumberland Gap, Tenn. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Cascade in the Alps. Size 24x50. Price 40 cents. 
Crossing the Stream. After Cary's beautiful evening 

landscape and cattle picture. Size 24x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Crow's Nest. After McCord's beautiful painting of 

Hudson River Scenery. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Cherubs. Size 2-1x30. Price 40 cents. 
Camping on the Susquehanna Size 24x30. Price40cts. 
Christian Emblems. Size 24x39. Price 40 cents. 
Cheat River Pass. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Cumberland Meadows. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Crucifixion. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Coneniaugh River. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Camping iu the Woods Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Cascadi - iu the Rocky Mountains. Size 24x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Christian Faith. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Champion Fruit. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Camp Scene on the Kentucky River by Moonlight. 

Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Deer Stalking on the Mississippi River. Size 24x30. 

Price 40 cents. 
Decoration Day. A beautiful oil ehromo in memoriam 

of our dead soldiers. After F. F. Martinez. Size 

24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Devotion. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Duck Shooting in Minnesota. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 
Disc< tvery of the Hudson River. Size 24x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Duck Shooting in Tennessee. Size 22x30. Price 40 cts. 
Excelsior Fruit. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Ecce Homo. Size 21x30. Price 40 cents. 
Evening on the Lake. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Evangeline. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Empire Fruit. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Evening on the Rhine. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Early Winter in New England. Size 22x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Entering Port. (Oil Boston Light.) Size 22x30. Price 

40 ceuts. 
Fording the River. Size 15x21. Price 40 cents. 
Ferns and Anchor. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Ferns and Cross. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Erement's Peak. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Forgotten. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Fair Point. (Lake Chatauqua.) Size 22x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Finding of Moses. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
QeDeral James A. Garfield. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
General Winfield S. Hancock. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Great Expectations. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents, 
glacier Canyon. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
General U. S. Grant. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Haying on the White Water. Size 24x30. Price 40cents. 
High Tideonthe Delaware. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Home in the Blueridge. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Home iu the Country. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Home on the Wabash. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Holy Family After Raphael's masterpiece. Size 

22x3 ). Price 40 cents. 
Home on the Miami.- Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
1 instead on the Connecticut. Size 22x30. Price 40 

cents. 
Home, iiweet Home. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Immaculate Conception. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Imperial Dessert P ruit. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Lake George. Beautiful lake and mountain. After 

John J. Zang. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Lakes of Killarnev. Size 24x30. Price 40 ceuts. 
La^t Supper. After Leonardo da Vinci. Size 24x30. 

Price 40 cents. 
Life on the Ocean Wave. Size 24x30. Price 40cents. 
Life's Voyage. An interesting ehromo. After John J 

/.an.-. Size 21x30. Price 40 cents. 
Left Alone. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Lakeside Cottage. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Le Grand Dessert. Sizai24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Lone Hand. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 
Lake of Four Cantons. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents 
Lake Stamberger. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Mary Queen of Scots. A beautiful portrait of this cele- 
brated queen. After F. F. Martinez, a fine painter. 

Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Moonlight in Egypt. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 
Moonrise on the Nile. Size 24x33. Price 40 cents 
Moses iu the Bulrushes. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents 
Mate to Le Grand Dessert. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 
Moonlight in Norway. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 
Meeting of the Waters. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 
Mater Del Eosa. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
Moonrise on the Ohio. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 
Merry Christmas Morning. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

To every yearly subscriber sending S3 to this office 



mnt of Olives. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Morning on Lake. Size 2-1x30. Price 40 cents. 

Mill Boy. Size 24x3). Price 40 cents. 

Mill Run in Winter. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Morning on the Penobscot. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Moonlight at Griffith's Point. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Near Dover, Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Near the Lighthouse. Size 24x30. Price 10 cents. 

New York Bay. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

New Year's Eve. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

New Hampshire Meadows. Size 2-1x30. Price 40 cents. 

Night Before Christmas. Size 21x30. Price 40 cents. 

One Hundred Years Ago. A beautiful oil ehromo, 
showing different scenes in the Revolution. Size 
2-1x30. Price 40 cents. 

Old Homestead on the Susquehanna. Size 22x30. Price 
40 cents. 

Old Kentucky Home. After the picture by Eastman 
Johnson, the most popular American figure painter. 
Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Old Mill in Tyrol. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Old Oaken Bucket. This is a ehromo of world-wide 
celebrity. After Wordsworth Thompson. Size 
19x26. Price 40 cents. 

On the Scent. A dog picture. Size 24x30. Price 40 
cents. 

Our New Friend. A charming out-of-door scene. Chil- 
dren feeding a beautiful large dog. Size 24x30. 
Price 40 cents. 

Old Mill on Beaver River. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

On the Saco River. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

On the Potomac. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Old Mill Pond. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

October Sports. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Off on a Cruise. Size 22x30. Price 40 ceuts. 

Our Lady of Knock. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Promised Saviour. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Pluck No. 1. Size 15 1-2x21 1-2. Price 40 cents. 

Pluck No. 2. Size 15 1-2x21 1-2. Price 40 cents. 

Prairie on Fire. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Pope Pius IX. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 
.Pope Leo XIII. Size 24x30. Price 40 ceuts. 

Pocahontas Saving the Life of Captain Smith. Size 
24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Pike's Peak. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Prairie Sports. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Quail Shooting. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Queen of Heaven. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Queen Victoria. A most excellent portrait of the 
Queen. By F. F. Martinez. Size 20x24. Price 80 
cents. 

Return from the Hunt. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Rock of Ages. A copy of the famous American paint- 
ing. The beautiful native work of Religious art. 
Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Ruins of Neideck. • Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Rendezvous. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Sherman's March to the Sea. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 

Steeple Chase. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Scene near Delhi, N. Y. Size 15x21. Price 40 cents. 

Summer in the Alps. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

St. Theobald's Chapel. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Sunrise on Lake Chatauqua. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 

St. Joseph and Child. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Shuttlecock Sports, Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Swing Sports. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Spring. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Sacred Heart of Mary. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus. Size 24x30. Price cents. 

Simply to Thy Cross I Cling. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 

Sunrise on the Coast of Ireland. Size 24x30. Price 40 
cents. 

Surprise in the Woods. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

St. John's River, Florida. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Simset, Lake Champlain. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Scene in Mitlands. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Southern Bayou. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Sunrise in the Alleghanies. Size 24x30.; Price 40 cents. 

Summer in New Hampshire. Size 24x30. Price 40 cts. 

Scene in the Catskills. Size 22x30. Price 40 ceuts. 

Summer on the Kanawha. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

St. Boniface Chapel. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Substantial Viands. Size 22x30. Price 40 ceuts. 

The Surprise Party. Size 21x30 Price 40 cents. 

The Hunters' Departure. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

The Hunters' Return. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

The Last Moments of Mary Queen of Scots. Size 24x30. 
Price 80 cents. 

The Farm Yard. Size 15x21. Price 40 cents. 

The Deacon's Prayer. Size 16x22 1-2. Price 40 cents. 

The Deacon's Revenge. Size 16x22 1-2. Price 40 cents. 

Trout Fishing in the White Mountains. Size 24x30. 
Price 40 cents. 

Three Graces. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Valley of the Connecticut. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Valley of the Mohawk. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Vestal Virgin. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Villa on the Hudson. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

View on the Danube Rrver. Size 24x33. Price 40 cents. 

Venice, Pride of the Sea. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Watch Meeting (New Year's Eve). Size 22x30. Price 
40 cents. 

West Point. This is a picture of great beauty. Every 
household of taste should have one to be a repre- 
sentative of the historical beauty of their country. 
It is after John J. Zang. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Wet Sheet and Flowing Sea. A beautiful marine pict- 
ure. After M. F. H. de Haas. Size 15 1-2x25. Price 
40 cents. 

Winter Moonlight. Size 24x20. Price 40 cents. 

Winter in Denmark. Size 24x30. Price 40 cents 

Washington and Lafayette. Size 2-1x30. Price 40 cents 

What's That? Size 24x30. Price 40 cents. 

Woodland Vows. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Washington's Family. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Winter in North Germany. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 

Winterat Niagara. Size 22x30. Price 40 cents. 



lagnra. 
Yacht Race. A handsome marine picture 

Price 40 cents. 
Yosemite Valley. Size 24x30. 



Size 22x30. 



Price 40 cents 

chromes P»bljshed>j^^^ 

Should indicate the ehromo which they prefer, and it will be forwarded post-paid. As we emrtof no travel ng 

agents, all subscriptions should be sent direct to us. Send for list ot chromos. employ a\ e.ing 

mailed l^to^lv ^^iiZl/nfi^f- v ° rkso f A ^- They can be obtained of any Newsdealer, or will be 
mantu (properly packed, singly or in pairs) by us, on receipt of price. 

(P. O. Box 3751.) GEORGE MUNltO, Publisher, 17 to 27 Vandewat/"- St., New York. 



k NEW FASHION MAGAZINE, 



ILLUSTRATED. 



THE NEW YORK 



ashion 




MONTHLY-PRICE 25 CENTS, 

WITH LARGE COLORED 

FASHION SUPPLEMENTS, 

EMBRACING ELEGANT COSTUMES FOR, ALL OCCASIONS. COL* 
ORED PATTERNS OF EMBROIUERY IN CHENILLE, CREW- 
EL, AND WORSTED WORK, AND SUPPLEMENTARY DIA- 
GRAMS OF PATTERNS, VlTE FILL DIRECTIONS, 



The New York Fashion Bazar, 

ILLrSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS OF 

Furs, Cloaks, Wraps, f*liawls, Cle« 
fiiinnl 4>til-ol-E)oor Costumes, 

The Latest Styles of Bonnets 
and Millinery Goods, 

Feathers, Ribbons, Laces, Cords, Braids, 
Bindings, Frillings, and Plaitings. 

DESCRIPTIONS OP 

FASHIONABLE FABRICS 

OF ALL B£H3iH>S. 

INCLUDING 
SILKS, SATTNS, VELVETS, MUSLINS, VELVETEENS, BROCADES, 
SERGES, INDIAN AND FRENCH CASHMERES. MERINOS, 
CRAPE CLOTHS, BARATHEAS, PARAMATTAS, ALPACAS, 
RUSSELL AND BAVENO CORDS, POMPADOURAND FIG- 
URED CASHMERES, GRENADINES, GAUZES, COR- 
DUROY, SATINETTE, GLOIRE DU NORD, BEGC 
DE SANTE, NOVELTIES IN BL^CK FANCY MA- 
TERIALS, WOOLENS, LLNENS, ETC., ETC. 

Fashions and Patterns in Ladies' Un- 
derclothing and Lingerie, 

STOCKINGS, GLOTES, HANDKERCHIEFS, AXD FAX3, 

New Furnitwrc and Poltery. 

FASHIONS IN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS 
AND ORNAMENTS. 




NEW YORK 



WILL CONTAIN, IN ADDITION, 

THE LATEST AND BEST NOVELS 
BY FAVORITE WRITERS. 

Price 25 cents per copy. 

Subscription Price §2.50 per annum. 

Address GEORGE MUNEO, Publisher, 
P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27Vande\vater St., New York, 

DICK SAM); 

OR, 

A CAPTAIN AT FIFTEEN. 

Anew and brilliant narrative of ^adventures by sea 
and land, embracing exciting incidents of the Whale 
fishery in the Southern Ocean, and the African Slave 
Trade, all told in the inimitable graphic manner which 
has made Jules Verne the most popular author of the 
century. Green cloth, extra. Illustrated with twenty 
engravings. Price SI. 00. 

GEORGE UTJNRO, Publisher, 17 to 27 Ynndewater 
street. New York. P. O. Box 3751. 



SEASBDE LIBRARY No. 957 a 

Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle 

EDITED BY 

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDK. 

Price SO ceots. 
These reminiscences of the famous Scotchman form 
a complete autobiography, although they are pijt 
forth as reminiscences of Carlyle's father, his wife. 
Edward Irving, and Lord Jeffrey. To the end of his 
life Mr. Carlyle persisted in declaring that his father 
was the most remarkable man— "quite the remark- 
ablest man " — whom he had ever seen. Ppsterity, 
however, will be apt to regard the son as not only more 
remarkable than the father, but as the remarkablest 
rt^an of our generation. To get such a maw's life and 
history from himself is a boon greater than even his 
greatest works. This work will be read with profound 
interest on both continents. It is more interesting than 
any novel. 



MUNRO'S DOLLAR SERIES. 

2/Alcr CECIL ITA Y'S WORKS. 
THE ARUNDEL MOTTO. Handsomely Bound Id 

Green olotli, 12mo., S1.00. 
NORA'S LOVE TEST, Handsomely Bound in Gresa 

cloth, 12mo., S1.00. 

OLD MYDDELTONS MONEY, Handsomely Bound in 

Green cloth, 12ino., $1.00. 

HIDDEN PERILS, Handsomely Bound in Green cloth. 
12mo„ SliOO 



TH E S EASI DE LIBRARY.— Advertisin g Department 



BRIGHT AS WHEN NEW! 




Itendera Silver, Nickle and Siflrer Plated Ware* 
Plntcs on Stoves, Pint© Glass. *«da Fountains, 
Show Cases. &c, &c, glistening ns when fVesli 
from tlits store. Saves time? preserves the surface, 
3iu<i contains no corrosive or gritty substance. 

Bny no imitations! Aemana the £ennlne! 



-A Skin of Beauty is a Joy Forever. 
»«£. T. FELIX «©IJKAJJ»'S 

Oriental Cream, or lap Beantiler 

Removes Tan, Pimples, 
Freckles. Moth- 
Patches, and eveiy 
.blemish on beauty, 
t&nd defies detection. 
fit has stood the test 
foi thirty years, and 
is so harmless vre 
taste it to be sure the 
preparation is prop- 
erly made. Accept 
no counterfeit of 
similar name. The 
distinguished Dr. L. 
A. Sayer, said to a 
lady of the haut ton 
(a patient): — "As 
you ladies will use 
them, I recommend 
* CrOuraud''s Cream ' as the least harmful of all the skin 
preparations.'" One bottle will last six months, using 
it every day. Also Poudre Subtile removes superfluous 
bair, without injury to the skin. 

JVIme. M. B. T. GOU'RAUD, Sole'Prop., 48 Bond St., N.Y. 
For sale by all druggists and Fancy Goods Dealers 
throughout the U. S., Canadasand Europe. Also found 
inN.T.City, atR. H. Macy's, SteShs's, Ehrichs 1 , Ridley's, 
and other Fancy Goods Dealers. (E^^Beware of base 
imitations. $1,000 Reward for arrest and proof of any 
one selbng the same. 




NEW YORK MONTHLY FASHION BAZAR 

GEORGE MUMBO, PLBLISHER, 
J?. O. Bex 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street. N. Y. 



-jo: :o: :o 



— :o: — :o: :o:l*lo;- 

PEARLS A MOUTH 




I beauty & fragrance! 

o: :o*. :o: :o: l*&:oI :o: :o: :o 

ARE COMMUNICATED TO THE MOUTH BY 



ire-feiefo renders the teeth white, the gnims host 
and the foreatb. sweet. It thorumghly a*eaisoves 
tartaa* Sroan the teeth, and prevents decay. 



Send $1, $2, $3, or $5 for a retail 
box by express of the best Candies 
in America, put up elegantly and 
_ strictly pure, suitable for presents. 
Refers to all Chicago. Trial orders solicited. Ad- 
dress V. F. GUNTHEU, Confectioner, 78 Madison St., 
Chicago. ^# 



L a HAY DEN, Teacher of GUITAR. 

Dealer in Guitars, Illusic, Hooks. Strings. 
Modern School for Guitar, 75 Cents. 

Complete instructions, and a large collection of music. 
Catalogues .and price-lists mailed free. Address, 

W. L. Hayden, 120 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. 




SOLE AGENT. 



The BEST and MOST POPUIiAK 
Sewing Thread of Modern Times. 



BEWAKE OF ESUTAOTCIKS; 



THE 

MOST 

RELIABLE 

FOOD 

IN THE WORLD 

;«? 

CHILDREN 

Bold by Druggist! 




THE BEST 

Idiet 

^SHOUI PEOPLE 



SUFFER NO MORE 

'tjse ' 
SWAYNE^S 

OfflTMT. 

., ~8TSIPT«SI§ are Moisture, Intense Itching In. 

i creased by esrutehlnemostotnieht. Other parte 

are sometimes affected. Swayne'a Ointment sure 

AI«o for Tetter, Blotches, nil Skin Diseases 

SOLD BY ALL DRUGGISTS- 




THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— LATEST ISSUES. 



1383 

1384 
1385 
1386 

13S7 

1387 

1388 

1389 

1390 

1391 

1392 
1393 
1394 
1394 
1395 
1396 
1397 

1398 

1399 

1400 
1401 

1402 



The Constable de Bourbon. Wm. Harrison 
Ainsworth ....... 

More Than Kin. By M. P 

The Lord's Pursebearers. Hesba S tret ton 

Plating With Edged Tools; or, Dolly's Ex- 
periment. Mattic E. Randall . 

The Cruise of the Midge. First half. Michael 
Scott 

The Cruise of the Midge. Second half. 
Michael Scott ...... 

Circe; or, Three Acts in the Life of an Art- 
ist. Babington White . - ... 

"By the Waters of Babylon." John Baker 
Hopkins ....... 

SlNGLEHEART AND DOUBLEFACE. A MATTER- 

of-Fact Romance. Charles Reade 
Look Before You Leap. Mrs. Alexander . 
Denise. By the Author of "Mademoiselle Mori" 
Two Kisses. By the Author of " Dora Thome " 
Roland Cashel. First half. Charles Lever 
Roland Cashel. Second half. Charles Lever 
Quisisana; or, Rest at Last. F. Spielhagan . 
Whiteladies. Mrs. Oliphant . " . 

The Burgomaster's Wife. A Tale of the 

Siege of Letden. George Ebers 
Kate Coventry. An Autobiography. Edited 

by G. J. Whyte-Melville .... 
The" Pirate. Sir Walter Scott . ■ * 

Happy Thoughts. (Illustrated.) F. C Burnand 
Anne Furness. By the Author of "The Sacris- 
tan's Household "... . . 
Mademoiselle Mori: A Tale of Modern Rome. 
First half. By the Author of "Noblesse 
Oblige" r- . 

For sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to an' 



20 
20 
10 

10 

20 

20 

20 

10 

10 
20 
20 
10 
20 
20 
20 
20 

20 

10 

20 

10 

20 



20 



1402 



Mademoiselle Mori: A Tale of Modern Rome. 

Second half. By the Author of "Noblesse 

Oblige" . 

The Sacristan's Household: A Story of 

Lippe-Detmold. By the Author of " Mabel's 

Progress " . . . . . 

Jessie's Flirtations 

Memoirs of a Veteran Detective. Translated 

from the French by Colonel H. Pelham Curtis 
Jean. Mrs. Newman ..... 

A Rose in June. Mrs. Oliphant . 
Debit and Credit. First half. Gnstav Freytag 
Debit and Credit. Second half, Gnstav Freytag 
Olive Blake's Good Work. John Cordy Jeaf- 

freson ......... 

A Race For A Wife. Hawley Smart 
A Child's History of England. Charles Dickens 
New Arabian. Nights. Robert Louis Stevenson 
Wives and Daughters. First half, Mrs. Gaskell 
Wives and Daughters. Second half. Mrs. 

Gaskell 

1414 The Sylvestres; or, The Outcasts. M. Betbam- 

Echvards ....#... 

1415 Vice Versa; or, A Lesson to Fathers. F. 
Anstey ....... 

Faustine. "Rita" . . . 

Mabel's Progress. By the Author of " The 

Sacristan's Household " 
Sylvie's Betrothed. Henry Greville 
Kept in the Dark. Anthony Trollope 
As Long as She Lived. F. "W. Robinson 
In Change Unchanged. Linda Villari 
1422 Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux. A Story of 

the Great Prairie. Lieut. -Colonel Butler 



1403 



1404 
1405 

1406 
1407 
1408 
1408 
1409 

1410 
1411 
1412 
1413 
1413 



1416 
1417 

1418 
1419 
1420 
1421 



20 



20 

20 

20 
20 
10 
20 
20 

20 
10 
20 
20 
20 

20 



20 
20 

20 
20 
10 
20 
20 



and 25 cents for double numbers, bv the publisher 
(P. 0. Box 3751.) 



y address, postage free, 
Parties ordering by 

GEORGE MUjNRO, Publisher, 17 



10 

receipt of 12 cents for single numbers 
mail will please order by numbers. 
to ZH Vandewater St., New York. 



\ 



